The Catholic system of
Christianity, both Greek and Roman, is sacramental and sacerdotal. The saving
grace of Christ is conveyed to men through the channel of seven sacraments, or
"mysteries," administered by ordained priests, who receive members
into the church by baptism, accompany them through the various stages of life,
and dismiss them by extreme unction into the other world. A literal priesthood
requires a literal sacrifice, and this is the repetition of Christ’s one
sacrifice on the cross offered by the priest in the mass from day to day. The
power of the mass extends not only to the living, but even to departed spirits
in purgatory, abridging their sufferings, and hastening their release and
transfer to heaven.

The Reformers rejected the
sacerdotal system altogether, and substituted for it the general priesthood of
believers, who have direct access to Christ as our only Mediator and Advocate,
and are to offer the spiritual sacrifices of prayer, praise, and intercession.
They rejected the sacrifice of the mass, and the theory of transubstantiation,
and restored the cup to the laity. They also agreed in raising the Word of God,
as the chief means of grace, above the sacraments, and in reducing the number
of the sacraments. They retained Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, as instituted
by Christ for universal and perpetual observance.

But here begins the difference.
It consists in the extent of departure from the sacramental system of the Roman
Church. The Lutheran Confession is, we may say, semi-sacramental, or much more
sacramental than the Reformed (if we except the Anglican communion).817 It retained the doctrine of baptismal regeneration, with the rite
of exorcism, and the corporal presence in the eucharist. The Augsburg
Confession makes the sacraments an essential criterion of the church. Luther’s
Catechism assigns to them an independent place alongside of the Commandments,
the Creed, and the Lord’s Prayer. It adds to baptism and the Lord’s Supper
confession and absolution as a third sacrament. At a later period, confirmation
was restored to the position of a quasi-sacrament as a supplement of
infant-baptism.

Zwingli and Calvin reduced the
sacraments to signs and seals of grace which is inwardly communicated by the
Holy Spirit. They asserted the sovereign causality of God, and the independence
of the Spirit who "bloweth where it willeth" (John 3:8). God can
communicate his gifts freely as he chooses. We are, however, bound to his
prescribed means. The Swiss Reformers also emphasized the necessity of faith,
not only for a profitable use of the sacrament (which is conceded by the
Lutherans), but for the reception of the sacrament itself. Unworthy
communicants receive only the visible sign, not the thing signified, and they
receive the sign to their own injury.

The Anabaptists went still
farther, and rejected infant-baptism because it lacks the element of faith on
the part of the baptized. They were the forerunners of the Quakers, who
dispensed with the external sacraments altogether, retaining, however, the
spiritual fact of regeneration and communion with Christ, which the sacraments
symbolize to the senses. The Quakers protested against forms when they were
made substitutes for the spirit, and furnished the historic proof that the
spirit in cases of necessity may live without forms, while forms without the
spirit are dead.

It was the will of Providence
that different theories on the means of grace should be developed. These
theories are not isolated; they proceed from different philosophical and
theological standpoints, and affect other doctrines. Luther was not quite wrong
when he said to Zwingli at Marburg "You have a different spirit."
Luther took his stand on the doctrine of justification by faith; Zwingli and
Calvin, on the doctrine of divine causality and sovereignty, or eternal
election. Luther proceeded anthropologically and soteriologically from man to
God, Zwingli and Calvin proceeded theologically from God to man.

The difference culminates in the
doctrine of the eucharistic presence, which called forth the fiercest
controversies, and still divides Western Christendom into hostile camps. The
eucharistic theories reveal an underlying difference of views on the relation
of God to man, of the supernatural to the natural, of invisible grace to the
visible means. The Roman doctrine of transubstantiation is the outgrowth of a
magical supernaturalism which absorbs and annihilates the natural and human,
leaving only the empty form. The Lutheran doctrine implies an interpenetration
of the divine and human. The commemorative theory of Zwingli saves the
integrity and peculiar character of the divine and human, but keeps them
separate and distinct. The eucharistic theory affects Christology, the relation
of church and state, and in some measure the character of piety. Lutheranism
inclines to the Eutychian, Zwinglianism to the Nestorian, Christology. The
former fosters a mystical, the latter a practical, type of piety.

Calvin, who appeared on the
stage of public action five years after Zwingli’s, and ten years before
Luther’s, death, advocated with great ability a eucharistic theory which
mediates between the Lutheran realism and the Zwinglian spiritualism, and which
passed into the Reformed confessions Luther had to deal with Zwingli, and never
came into contact with Calvin. If he had, the controversy might have taken a
different shape; but he would have maintained his own view of the real
presence, and refused the figurative interpretation of the words of
institution.

With the doctrine of the
eucharist are connected some minor ritualistic differences, as the use of the
wafer, and the kneeling posture of the communicants, which the Lutherans
retained from the Catholic Church; while the Reformed restored the primitive
practice of the breaking of bread, and the standing or sitting posture. Some
Lutheran churches retained also the elevation of the host; Luther himself
declared it a matter of indifference, and abolished it at Wittenberg in 1542.818

On the Baptist side
the writings of Huebmaier, or, as
he wrote his name, Huebmör, which
are very rare, and ought to be collected and republished. Calvary, in "Mittheilungen aus dem
Antiquariate," vol. I. Berlin, 1870, gives a complete list of them. The
most important are Von dem christlichen Tauf der Gläubigen (1525); Eine Stimme
eines ganzen christlichen Lebens (1525); Von Ketzern und ihren Verbrennern;
Schlussreden (Axiomata);
Ein Form des Nachtmals Christi; Von der Freiwilligkeit des Menschen (to show that God gives to all
men an opportunity to become his children by free choice); Zwölf
Artikel des christlichen Glaubens, etc.

All the Reformers retained the
custom of infant-baptism, and opposed rebaptism (Wiedertaufe) as a heresy. So far they
agreed with the Catholics against the Anabaptists, or Catabaptists as they were
called, although they rejected the name, because in their view the baptism of
infants was no baptism at all.

The Anabaptists or Baptists (as
distinct from Pedobaptists) sprang up in Germany, Holland, and Switzerland, and
organized independent congregations. Their leaders were Huebmaier, Denck,
Hätzer, and Grebel. They thought that the Reformers stopped half-way, and did
not go to the root of the evil. They broke with the historical tradition, and
constructed a new church of believers on the voluntary principle. Their
fundamental doctrine was, that baptism is a voluntary act, and requires
personal repentance, and faith in Christ. They rejected infant-baptism as an
anti-scriptural invention. They could find no trace of it in the New Testament,
the only authority in matters of faith. They were cruelly persecuted in
Protestant as well as Roman Catholic countries. We must carefully distinguish
the better class of Baptists and the Mennonites from the restless revolutionary
radicals and fanatics, like Carlstadt, Muenzer, and the leaders of the Muenster
tragedy.

The mode of baptism was not an
article of controversy at that time; for the Reformers either preferred
immersion (Luther), or held the mode to be a matter of indifference (Calvin).

Luther agreed substantially with
the Roman Catholic doctrine of baptism. His Taufbuechlein
of 1523 is a
translation of the Latin baptismal service, including the formula of exorcism,
the sign of the cross, and the dipping. The second edition (1526) is abridged,
and omits the use of chrisma, salt, and spittle.819 He defeated Carlstadt, Muenzer, and the Zwickau Prophets, who
rejected infant-baptism, and embarrassed even Melanchthon. Saxony was cleared
of Anabaptists; but their progress in other parts of Germany induced him a few
years later to write a special book against Huebmaier, who appealed to his
authority, and ascribed to him similar views.

Balthasar Huebmaier, or Huebmör,
was born near Augsburg, 1480; studied under Dr. Eck at Freiburg-i. -B. and
Ingolstadt, and acquired the degree of doctor of divinity. He became a famous
preacher in the cathedral at Regensburg, and occasioned the expulsion of the
Jews in 1519, whose synagogue was converted into a chapel of St. Mary. In 1522
he embraced Protestant opinions, and became pastor at Waldshut on the Rhine, on
the borders of Switzerland. He visited Erasmus at Basel, and Zwingli at
Zuerich, and aided the latter in the introduction of the Reformation. The
Austrian government threatened violent measures, and demanded the surrender of
his person. He left Waldshut, and took refuge in a convent of Schaffhausen, but
afterwards returned. He openly expressed his dissent from Zwingli and
Oecolampadius on the subject of infant-baptism. Zwingli was right, he said, in
maintaining that baptism was a mere sign, but the significance of this sign was
the pledge of faith and obedience unto death, and such a pledge a child could
not make; therefore the baptism of a child had no meaning, and was invalid.
Faith must be present, and cannot be taken for granted as a future certainly.
Instead of baptism he introduced a solemn presentation or consecration of
children before the congregation. He made common cause with the Anabaptists of
Zuerich, and with Thomas Muenzer, who came into the neighborhood of Waldshut,
and kindled the flame of the Peasants’ War. He is supposed by some to be the
author of the Twelve Articles of the Peasants. He was rebaptized about Easter,
1525, and re-baptized many others. He abolished the mass, and removed the
altar, baptismal font, pictures and crosses from the church.

The triumph of the re-action
against the rebellious peasants forced him to flee to Zuerich (December, 1525).
He had a public disputation with Zwingli, who had himself formerly leaned to
the view that it would be better to put off baptism to riper years of
responsibility, though he never condemned infant-baptism. He retracted under
pressure and protest, and was dismissed with some aid. He went to Nikolsburg in
Moravia, published a number of books in German, having brought a printing-press
with him from Switzerland, and gathered the Baptist "Brethren" into
congregations. But when Moravia, after the death of Louis of Hungary, fell into
the possession of King Ferdinand of Austria, Huebmaier was arrested with his
wife, sent to Vienna, charged with complicity in the Peasants’ War, and burned
to death, March 10, 1528. He died with serene courage and pious resignation.
His wife, who had strengthened him in his faith, was drowned three days later
in the Danube. Zwingli, after his quarrel with Huebmaier, speaks unfavorably of
his character; Vadian of St. Gall, and Bullinger, give him credit for great
eloquence and learning, but charge him with a restless spirit of innovation. He
was an advocate of the voluntary principle. and a martyr of religious freedom.
Heretics, he maintained, are those only who wickedly oppose the Holy Sciptures,
and should be won by instruction and persuasion. To use force is to deny
Christ, who came to save, not to destroy.

A few months before Huebmaier’s
death, Luther wrote, rather hastily, a tract against the Anabaptists (January
or February, 1528), in the shape of a letter to two unnamed ministers in
Catholic territory.820 "I
know well enough," he begins, "that Balthasar Huebmör quotes me among
others by name, in his blasphemous book on Re-baptism, as if I were of his
foolish mind. But I take comfort in the fact that neither friend nor foe will
believe such a lie, since I have sufficiently in my sermons shown my faith in
infant-baptism." He expressed his dissent from the harsh and cruel
treatment of the Anabaptists, and maintained that they ought to be resisted
only by the Word of God and arguments, not by fire and sword, unless they
preach insurrection and resist the civil magistrate.821 At the same time he ungenerously depreciated the constancy of
their martyrs, and compared them to the Jewish martyrs at the destruction of
Jerusalem, and the Donatist martyrs.822 He
thought it served the papists right, to be troubled with such sectaries of the
Devil in punishment for not tolerating the gospel. He then proceeds to refute
their objections to infant-baptism.

1. Infant-baptism is wrong
because it comes from the pope, who is Antichrist. But then we ought to reject
the Scriptures, and Christianity itself, which we have in common with Rome.
Christ found many abuses among the Pharisees and Sadducees and the Jewish
people, but did not reject the Old Testament, and told his disciples to observe
their doctrines (Matt. 23:3). Here Luther pays a striking tribute to the Roman
church, and supports it by the very fact that the pope is Antichrist, and
reveals his tyranny in the temple of God, that is, within the Christian Church,
and not outside of it.823 By such
an argument the Anabaptists weaken the cause of Christianity, and deceive
themselves.

2. Infants know nothing of their
baptism, and have to learn it afterwards from their parents or sponsors. But we
know nothing of our natural birth and of many other things, except on the
testimony of others.

3. Infants cannot believe.
Luther denied this, and appealed to the word of Christ, who declared them fit
for the kingdom of heaven (Matt. 19:14), and to the example of John the
Baptist, who believed in the mother’s womb (Luke 1:41). Reformed divines, while
admitting the capacity or germ of faith in infants, base infant-baptism on the
vicarious faith of parents, and the covenant blessing of Abraham which extends
to his seed (Gen. 17:7). Luther mentions this also.

4. The absence of a command to
baptize children. But they are included in the command to baptize all nations
(Matt. 28:19). The burden of proof lies on the Anabaptists to show that
infant-baptism is forbidden in the Bible, before they abolish such an old and
venerable institution of the whole Christian Church.

III. The respective
sections in the General Church Histories, and the Histories of the Reformation,
especially Seckendorf, Gieseler, Baur, Hagenbach,
Merle, Fisher. Planck,
in his Geschichte des Protest. Lehrbegriffs (Leipz. second revised ed.,
1792, vol. II., Books V. and VI.), gives a very full and accurate account of
the eucharistic controversy, although he calls it "die
unseligste alter Streitigkeiten" (II. 205).

While the Reformers were agreed
on the question of infant-baptism against the Anabaptists, they disagreed on
the mode and extent of the real presence in the Lord’s Supper.

The eucharistic controversies of
the sixteenth century present a sad and disheartening spectacle of human
passion and violence, and inflicted great injury to the progress of the
Reformation by preventing united action, and giving aid and comfort to the
enemy; but they were overruled for the clearer development and statement of
truth, like the equally violent Trinitarian, Christological, and other
controversies in the ancient church. It is a humiliating fact, that the feast
of union and communion of believers with Christ and with each other, wherein
they engage in the highest act of worship, and make the nearest approach to
heaven, should have become the innocent occasion of bitter contests among
brethren professing the same faith and the same devotion to Christ and his
gospel. The person of Christ and the supper of Christ have stirred up the
deepest passions of love and hatred. Fortunately, the practical benefit of the
sacrament depends upon God’s promise, and simple and childlike faith in Christ,
and not upon any scholastic theory, any more than the benefit of the Sacred
Scriptures depends upon a critical knowledge of Greek and Hebrew.

The eucharist was twice the
subject of controversy in the Middle Ages,—first in the ninth, and then in the
eleventh, century. The question in both cases turned on a grossly realistic and
a spiritual conception of the sacramental presence and fruition of Christ’s
body and blood; and the result was the triumph of the Roman dogma of
transubstantiation, as advocated by Paschasius Radbertus against Ratramnus, and
by Lanfranc against Berengar, and as finally sanctioned by the fourth Lateran
Council in 1215, and the Council of Trent in 1551.824

The Greek and Latin churches are
substantially agreed on the doctrine of the communion and the mass, but divide
on the ritual question of the use of leavened or unleavened bread. The
withdrawal of the cup from the laity caused the bloody Hussite wars.

The eucharistic controversies of
the Protestants assumed a different form. Transubstantiation was discarded by
both parties. The question was not, whether the elements as to their substance
are miraculously transformed into the body and blood of Christ, but whether
Christ was corporally or only spiritually (though no less really) present with
the natural elements; and whether he was partaken of by all communicants
through the mouth, or only by the worthy communicants through faith.

The controversy has two acts,
each with several scenes: first, between Luther and Zwingli; secondly, between
the Lutherans and Philippists and Calvinists. At last Luther’s theory triumphed
in the Lutheran, Calvin’s theory in the Reformed churches. The Protestant
denominations which have arisen since the Reformation on English and American
soil,—Independents, Baptists, Methodists, etc.,—have adopted the Reformed view.
Luther’s theory is strictly confined to the church which bears his name. But,
as the Melanchthonian and moderate Lutherans approach very nearly the
Calvinistic view, so there are Calvinists, and especially Anglicans, who
approach the Lutheran view more nearly than the Zwinglian. The fierce
antagonism of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries has given way on both
sides to a more dispassionate and charitable temper. This is a real progress.

We shall first trace the
external history of this controversy, and then present the different theories
with the arguments.

§ 104. Luther’s Theory before the Controversy.

Luther rejected, in his work on
the "Babylonish Captivity of the Church" (1520), the doctrine of the
mass, transubstantiation, and the withdrawal of the cup, as strongholds of the
Papal tyranny. From this position he never receded. In the same work he clearly
intimated his own view, which he had learned from Pierre d’Ailly, Cardinal of
Cambray (Cameracensis),825in these words: —

Formerly, when I was imbibing
the scholastic theology, the Cardinal of Cambray gave me occasion for
reflection, by arguing most acutely, in the Fourth Book of the Sentences, that
it would be much more probable, and that fewer superfluous miracles would have
to be introduced, if real bread and real wine, and not only their accidents,
were understood to be upon the altar, unless the Church had determined the
contrary. Afterwards, when I saw what the church was, which had thus determined,—namely,
the Thomistic, that is, the Aristotelian Church,—I became bolder; and, whereas
I had been before in great straits of doubt, I now at length established my
conscience in the former opinion: namely, that there were real bread and
real wine, in which were the real flesh and real blood of Christ in no other
manner and in no less degree than the other party assert them to be under the
accidents.826... Why should not Christ be able to include his body
within the substance of bread, as well as within the accidents? Fire and iron, two different substances, are
so mingled in red-hot iron that every part of it is both fire and iron. Why may
not the glorious body of Christ much more be in every part of the substance of
the bread? ... I rejoice greatly, that,
at least among the common people, there remains a simple faith in this
sacrament. They neither understand nor argue whether there are accidents in it
or substance, but believe, with simple faith, that the body and blood of Christ
are truly contained in it, leaving to these men of leisure the task of arguing
as to what it contains."

At that time of departure from
Romanism he would have been very glad, as he confessed five years later, to
become convinced that there was nothing in the Lord’s Supper but bread and
wine. Yea, his old Adam was still inclined to such a view; but he dared not
doubt the literal meaning of the words of institution.827 In his book on the "Adoration of the Sacrament" (1523),
addressed to the Waldensian Brethren in Bohemia, he rejects their symbolical
theory, as well as the Romish transub-stantiation, and insists on the real and
substantial presence of Christ’s body and blood in the eucharistic elements;
but treats them very kindly, notwithstanding their supposed error, and commends
them for their piety and discipline, in which they excelled the Germans.828

In his conviction of the real presence,
he was greatly strengthened by the personal attacks and perverse exegesis of
Carlstadt. Henceforth he advocated the point of agreement with the Catholics
more strenuously than he had formerly opposed the points in which he differed
from them. He changed the tone of moderation which he had shown in his address
to the Bohemians, and treated his Protestant opponents with as great severity
as the Papists. His peculiar view of the eucharist became the most, almost the
only, serious doctrinal difference between the two wings of the Reformation,
and has kept them apart ever since.

§ 105. Luther and Carlstadt.

The first outward impulse to the
eucharistic controversy came from Holland in the summer of 1522, when Henry
Rhodius brought from Utrecht a collection of the writings of John Wessel to
Wittenberg, which he had received from a distinguished Dutch jurist, Cornelius
Honius (Hoen). Wessel, one of the chief forerunners of the Reformation (d.
1489), proposed, in a tract "De Coena," a figurative interpretation
of the words of institution, which seems to have influenced the opinions of
Erasmus, Carlstadt, and Zwingli on this subject.829

But Luther was so much pleased
with the agreement on other points that he overlooked the difference, and
lauded Wessel as a theologian truly taught of God, and endowed with a high mind
and wonderful gifts; yea, so fully in harmony with him, that the Papists might
charge Luther with having derived all his doctrines from Wessel, had he known
his writings before.830

The controversy was opened in
earnest by Carlstadt, Luther’s older colleague and former friend, who gave him
infinite trouble, and forced him into self-defense and into the development of
the conservative and churchly elements in his theology.831 He smarted under the defeat he had suffered in 1522, and first
silently, then openly, opposed Luther, regarding him henceforth as his enemy,
and as the author of all his misfortunes. In this way he mixed, from the start,
the gall of personal bitterness into the eucharistic controversy. Luther would
probably have been more moderate if it had been free from those complications.

In 1524 Carlstadt came out with
a new and absurd interpretation of the words of institution (Matt. 26:26 and
parallel passages); holding that the Greek word for "this" being
neuter (tou'to), could not refer to the bread,
which is masculine in Greek (a[rto"), but must refer to the body of
Christ (to; sw'ma), to which the Saviour pointed,
so as to say, "Take, eat! This
here [this body] is my body [which will soon be] broken for you; this [blood]
is my blood [which will be] shed for you." This resolves the words into a
tautology and platitude. At the same time Carlstadt opposed infant-baptism, and
traced his crude novelties to higher inspiration.832 After his expulsion from Saxony he propagated them, together with
slanderous assaults upon Luther as, a double Papist," in several
publications which appeared in Basel and Strasburg.833 He excited some interest among the Swiss Reformers, who
sympathized with his misfortunes, and agreed with his opposition to the theory
of a corporal presence and oral manducation, but dissented entirely from his exegesis,
his mysticism, and radicalism. Capito and Bucer, the Reformers of Strassburg,
leaned to the Swiss view, but regretted the controversy, and sent a deacon with
Carlstadt’s tracts to Luther for advice.

Luther exhorted the
Strassburgers, in a vigorous letter (Dec. 14, 1524), to hold fast to the
evangelical doctrines, and warned them against the dangerous vagaries of
Carlstadt. At the same time he issued an elaborate refutation of Carlstadt, in
a book "Against the Heavenly Prophets" (December, 1524, and January,
1525, in two parts). It is written with great ability and great violence.
"A new storm is arising," he begins. "Dr. Andreas Carlstadt is
fallen away from us, and has become our worst enemy." He thought the poor
man had committed the unpardonable sin.834 He describes, in vivid colors, the wild and misty mysticism and
false legalism of these self-styled prophets, and defends the real presence. He
despised the objections of reason, which was the mistress of the Devil. It is
characteristic, that, from this time on, he lowered his estimate of the value
of reason in theology, although he used it very freely and effectually in this
very book.835

§ 106. Luther and Zwingli.

But now two more formidable
opponents appeared on the field, who, by independent study, had arrived at a
far more sensible interpretation of the words of institution than that of
Carlstadt, and supported it with strong exegetical and rational arguments.
Zwingli, the Luther of Switzerland, and Oecolampadius, its Melanchthon, gave
the controversy a new and more serious turn.

Zwingli received the first
suggestion of a figurative interpretation (est = significat) from
Erasmus and Wessel through Honius; as Luther derived his first idea of a
corporal presence in the unchanged elements from Pierre d’Ailly.836 He communicated his view, in a confidential Latin letter, Nov. 16,
1524, to the Lutheran preacher, Matthaeus Alber in Reutlingen, an opponent of
Carlstadt, and based it on Christ’s word, John 6:63, as excluding a carnal or
material manducation of his body and blood.837

A few months later (March, 1525)
he openly expressed his view with the same arguments in the "Commentary on
the True and False Religion."838 This was three months after Luther had published his book against
Carlstadt. He does not men-tion Luther in either of these two writings, but
evidently aimed at him, and speaks of his view almost as contemptuously as
Luther had spoken of Carlstadt’s view.

In the same year Oecolampadius,
one of the most learned and pious men of his age, appeared with a very able
work in defense of the same theory, except that he put the figure in the
predicate, and explained the words of institution (like Tertullian): "hoc est figura corporis mei." He lays, how-ever, no
stress on this difference, as the sense is the same. He wrote with as much
modesty and moderation as learning and acuteness. He first made use of
testimonies of the church fathers, especially Augustin, who favors a spiritual
fruition of Christ by faith. Erasmus judged the arguments of Oecolampadius to
be strong enough to seduce the very elect.839

The Lutherans were not slow to
reply to the Swiss.

Bugenhagen, a good pastor, but
poor theologian, published a letter to Hess of Breslau against Zwingli.840 He argues, that, if the substantive verb in the words of
institution is figurative, it must always be figurative; e.g., "Peter is a
man," would mean, "Peter signifies a man."841 He also appeals to 1 Cor. 11:27, where Paul says that unworthy
communicants are guilty of the body and blood of Christ, not of bread and wine.
Zwingli had easy work to dispose of such an opponent.842

Several Swabian preachers, under
the lead of Brentius of Hall, replied to Oecolampadius, who (himself a Swabian
by birth) had dedicated his book to them with the request to examine and review
it. Their Syngramma Suevicum is much more important than Bugenhagen’s
epistle. They put forth the peculiar view that the word of Christ puts into
bread and wine the very body and blood of Christ; as the word of Moses imparted
a hearing power to the brazen serpent; as the word of Christ, "Peace be
unto you," imparts peace; and the word, "Thy sins be forgiven,"
imparts pardon. But, by denying that the body of Christ is broken by the hands,
and chewed with the teeth, they unwittingly approached the Swiss idea of a
purely spiritual manducation. Oecolampadius clearly demonstrated this
inconsistency in his Anti-syngramma (1526).843 Pirkheimer of Nuernberg, and Billicum of Nördlingen, likewise
wrote against Oecolampadius, but without adding any thing new.

The controversy reached its
height in 1527 and 1528, when Zwingli and Luther came into direct conflict.
Zwingli combated Luther’s view vigorously, but respectfully, fortiter in re, suaviter in modo, in a Latin book, under the
peaceful title, "Friendly Exegesis," and sent a copy to Luther with a
letter, April 1, 1527.844 Luther appeared
nearly at the same time (early in 1527), but in a very different tone, with a
German book against Zwingli and Oecolampadius, under the title, "That
the Words of Christ: ’This is my Body,’ stand fast. Against the Fanatics
(Schwarmgeister)."845 Here he derives the Swiss view directly from the inspiration of
the Devil. "How true it is," he begins, "that the Devil is a
master of a thousand arts!846 He proves
this powerfully in the external rule of this world by bodily lusts, tricks,
sins, murder, ruin, etc., but especially, and above all measure, in spiritual
and external things which affect God’s honor and our conscience. How he can
turn and twist, and throw all sorts of obstacles in the way, to prevent men
from being saved and abiding in the Christian truth!" Luther goes on to trace the working of the
Devil from the first corruptions of the gospel by heretics, popes, and
Councils, down to Carlstadt and the Zwinglians, and mentions the Devil on every
page. This is characteristic of his style of polemics against the
Sacramentarians, as well as the Papists. He refers all evil in the world to the
Prince of evil. He believed in his presence and power as much as in the
omnipresence of God and the ubiquity of Christ’s body.

He dwells at length on the
meaning of the words of institution: "This is my body." They must be
taken literally, unless the contrary can be proved. Every departure from the
literal sense is a device of Satan, by which, in his pride and malice, he would
rob man of respect for God’s Word, and of the benefit of the sacrament. He
makes much account of the disagreement of his opponents, and returns to it
again and again, as if it were conclusive against them. Carlstadt tortures the
word "this" in the sacred text; Zwingli, the word "is;"
"Oecolampadius, the word "body;"847others torture and murder the whole
text. All alike destroy the sacraments. He allows no figurative meaning even in
such passages as 1 Cor. 10:4; John 15:1; Gen. 41:26; Exod. 12:11, 12. When Paul
says, Christ is a rock, he means that he is truly a spiritual rock. When
Christ says, "I am the vine," he means a true spiritual vine.
But what else is this than a figurative interpretation in another form?

A great part of the book is
devoted to the proof of the ubiquity of Christ’s body. He explains "the
right hand of God" to mean his "almighty power." Here he falls
himself into a figurative interpretation. He ridicules the childish notion
which he ascribes to his opponents, although they never dreamed of it, that
Christ is literally seated, and immovably fastened, on a golden throne in heaven,
with a golden crown on his head.848 He does not go so far as to deny the realness of Christ’s
ascension, which implies a removal of his corporal presence. There is, in this
reasoning, a strange combination of literal and figurative interpretation. But
he very forcibly argues from the personal union of the divine and human natures
in Christ, for the possibility of a real presence; only he errs in confounding
real with corporal. He forgets that the spiritual is even more real than the
corporal, and that the corporal is worth nothing without the spiritual.

Nitzsch and Köstlin are right
when they say that both Zwingli and Luther "assume qualities of the glorified
body of Christ, of which we can know nothing; the one by asserting a spacial
inclusion of that body in heaven, the other by asserting dogmatically its
divine omnipresence on earth."849 We may add, that the Reformers proceeded on an assumption of the
locality of heaven, which is made impossible by the Copernican system. For
aught we know, heaven may be very near, and round about as well as above us.

Zwingli answered Luther without
delay, in an elaborate treatise, likewise in German (but in the Swiss dialect),
and under a similar title ("That the words, ’This is my body,’ have
still the old and only sense," etc.).850 It is addressed to the Elector John of Saxony, and dated June 20,
1527. Zwingli follows Luther step by step, answers every argument, defends the
figurative interpretation of the words of institution by many parallel passages
(Gen. 41:26; Exod. 12:11; Gal. 4:24; Matt. 11:14; 1 Cor. 10:4, etc.), and
discusses also the relation of the two natures in Christ.

He disowns the imputed literal
understanding of God’s almighty hand, and says, "We have known long since
that God’s power is everywhere, that he is the Being of beings, and that his
omnipresence upholds all things. We know that where Christ is, there is God,
and where God is, there is Christ. But we distinguish between the two natures,
and between the person of Christ and the body of Christ." He charges
Luther with confounding the two. The attributes of the infinite nature of God
are not communicable to the finite nature of man, except by an exchange which
is called in rhetoric alloeosis.
The ubiquity of Christ’s body is a contradiction. Christ is everywhere, but his
body cannot be everywhere without ceasing to be a body, in any proper sense of
the term.

This book of Zwingli is much
sharper than his former writings on the subject. He abstains indeed from
abusive language, and says that God’s Word must decide the controversy, and not
opprobrious terms, as fanatic, devil, murderer, heretic, hypocrite, which
Luther deals out so freely.851 But he and his friends applied also very unjust terms against the
Lutherans, such as Capernaites, flesh-eaters, blood-drinkers, and called their
communion bread a baked God.852 Moreover, Zwingli assumes an offensive and provoking tone of
superiority, which cut to the quick of Luther’s sensibilities. Take the opening
sentence: "To Martin Luther, Huldrych Zwingli wishes grace and peace from
God through Jesus Christ the living Son of God, who, for our salvation,
suffered death, and then left this world in his body and ascended to heaven,
where he sits until he shall return on the last day, according to his own word,
so that you may know that he dwells in our hearts by faith (Eph. 3:17), and not
by bodily eating through the mouth, as thou wouldest teach without God’s
Word." Towards the end he says, with reference to Luther’s attack upon
Bucer: "Christ teaches us to return good for evil. Antichrist reverses the
maxim, and you have followed him by abusing the pious and learned Bucer for
translating and spreading your books .... Dear Luther, I humbly beseech you not
to be so furious in this matter as heretofore. If you are Christ’s, so are we.
It behooves us to contend only with the Word of God, and to observe Christian
self-control. We must not fight against God, nor cloak our errors by his Word.
God grant unto you the knowledge of truth, and of thyself, that you may remain
Luther, and not become louvtrion.853 The truth will prevail. Amen."

Oecolampadius wrote likewise a
book in self-defense.854 Luther
now came out, in March, 1528, with his Great "Confession on the
Lord’s Supper," which he intended to be his last word in this
controversy.855 It is his
most elaborate treatise on the eucharist, full of force and depth, but also
full of wrath. He begins again with the Devil, and rejoices that he had
provoked his fury by the defense of the holy sacrament. He compares the
writings of his opponents to venomous adders. I shall waste, he says, no more
paper on their mad lies and nonsense, lest the Devil might be made still more
furious. May the merciful God convert them, and deliver them from the bonds of
Satan! I can do no more. A heretic we
must reject, after the first and second admonition (Tit. 3:10). Nevertheless,
he proceeds to an elaborate assault on the Devil and his fanatical crew.

The "Confession" is
divided into three parts. The first is a refutation of the arguments of Zwingli
and Oecolampadius; the second, an explanation of the passages which treat of
the Lord’s Supper; the third, a statement of all the articles of his faith,
against old and new heresies.

He devotes much space to a
defense of the ubiquity of Christ’s body, which he derives from the unity of
the two natures. He calls to aid the scholastic distinction between three modes
of presence,—local, definitive, and repletive.856 He calls Zwingli’s alloeosis "a mask of the Devil." He
concludes with these words: "This is my faith, the faith of all true
Christians, as taught in the Holy Scriptures. I beg all pious hearts to bear me
witness, and to pray for me that I may stand firm in this faith to the end.
For—which God forbid!—should I in the temptation and agony of death speak
differently, it must be counted for nothing but an inspiration of the Devil.857 Thus help me my Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, blessed forever.
Amen."

The "Confession"
called out two lengthy answers of Zwingli and Oecolampadius, at the request of
the Strassburg divines; but they add nothing new.858

This bitter controversy fell in the most trying time of
Luther, when he suffered greatly from physical infirmity and mental depression,
and when a pestilence raged at Wittenberg (1527), which caused the temporary
removal of the University to Jena. He remained on the post of danger, escaped
the jaws of death, and measurably recovered his strength, but not his former
cheerfulness, good humor, and buoyancy of spirit.

(2) Reformed (Swiss
and Strassburg) reports of Collin,
Zwingli, Oecolampadius, are collected in Zwingli’s Opera, ed.
Schuler and Schulthess, vol. IV. 173–204, and Hospinian’s Hist. Sacram.,
II. 74 sqq., 123 sqq. Bullinger: Reformationsgesch., II. 223 sqq. The reports of Bucer and Hedio are used by Baum in his Capito und Butzer (Elberf.
1860), p. 453 sqq., and Erichson (see below). The MS. of Capito’s Itinerary was
burned in 1870 with the library of the Protestant Seminary at Strassburg, but
had previously been copied by Professor Baum.

The eucharistic controversy
broke the political force of Protestantism, and gave new strength to the Roman
party, which achieved a decided victory in the Diet of Speier, April, 1529.

In this critical situation, the
Elector of Saxony and the Landgrave of Hesse formed at Speier "a secret
agreement" with the cities of Nuernberg, Ulm, Strassburg and St. Gall, for
mutual protection (April 22, 1529). Strassburg and St. Gall sided with Zuerich
on the eucharistic question.

The situation became more
threatening during the summer. The Emperor made peace with the Pope, June 29,
and with France, July 19, pledging himself with his allies to extirpate the new
deadly heresy; and was on the way to Augsburg, where the fate of Protestantism
was to be decided. But while the nations of Europe aimed to emancipate
themselves from the authority of the church and the clergy, the religious
element was more powerful,—the hierarchical in the Roman, the evangelical in
the Protestant party,—and overruled the political. This is the character of the
sixteenth century: it was still a churchly and theological age.

Luther and Melanchthon opposed
every alliance with the Zwinglians; they would not sacrifice a particle of
their creed to any political advantage, being confident that the truth must
prevail in the end, without secular aid. Their attitude in this matter was
narrow and impolitic, but morally grand. In a letter to Elector John, March 6,
1530, Luther denied the right of resistance to the Emperor, even if he were
wrong and used force against the gospel. "According to the Scriptures,"
he says, "a Christian dare not resist the magistrate, right or wrong, but
must suffer violence and injustice, especially from the magistrate."859

Luther, as soon as he heard of
the agreement at Speier, persuaded the Elector to annul it. "How can we
unite with people who strive against God and the sacrament? This is the road to damnation, for body and
soul." Melanchthon advised his friends in Nuernberg to withdraw from the
alliance, "for the godless opinion of Zwingli should never be defended."
The agreement came to nothing.

Philip of Hesse stood alone. He
was enthusiastic for an alliance, because he half sympathized with the
Zwinglian theory, and deemed the controversy to be a battle of words. He hoped
that a personal conference of the theological leaders would bring about an
understanding.

After consulting Melanchthon
personally in Speier, and Zwingli by letter, the Landgrave issued formal
invitations to the Reformers, to meet at Marburg, and offered them a
safe-conduct through his territory.860

Zwingli received the invitation
with joy, and hoped for the best. The magistrate of Zuerich was opposed to his
leaving; but he resolved to brave the danger of a long journey through hostile
territory, and left his home in the night of Sept. 3, without waiting for the
Landgrave’s safe-conduct, and without even informing his wife of his
destination, beyond Basel. Accompanied by a single friend, the Greek professor
Collin, he reached Basel safely on horseback, and on the 6th of September he
embarked with Oecolampadius and several merchants on the Rhine for Strassburg,
where they arrived after thirteen hours. The Reformers lodged in the house of
Matthew Zell, the preacher in the cathedral, and were hospitably entertained by
his wife Catharine, who cooked their meals, waited at the table, and conversed
with them on theology so intelligently that they ranked her above many doctors.
She often alluded in later years, with joy and pride, to her humble services to
these illustrious men. They remained in Strassburg eleven days, in important
consultation with the ministers and magistrates. Zwingli preached in the
minister on Sunday, the 12th of September, in the morning, on our knowledge of
truth, and our duty to obey it; Oecolampadius preached in the afternoon, on the
new creature in Christ, and on faith operative in love (Gal. 5:6). On the 19th
of September, at six in the morning, they departed with the Strassburg
delegates, Bucer, Hedio, and Jacob Sturm, the esteemed head of the city
magistrate, under protection of five soldiers. They travelled on horseback over
hills and dales, through forests and secret paths. At the Hessian frontier,
they were received by forty cavaliers, and reached Marburg on the 27th of
September, at four o’clock in the afternoon, and were cordially welcomed by the
Landgrave in person.861 The same
journey can now be made in a few hours. On the next days they preached.

Zwingli and Philip of Hesse had
political and theological sympathies. Zwingli, who was a statesman as well as a
reformer, conceived about that time far-reaching political combinations in the
interest of religion. He aimed at no less than a Protestant alliance between
Zuerich, Hesse, Strassburg, France, Venice, and Denmark, against the Roman
empire and the house of Habsburg. He believed in muscular, aggressive
Christianity, and in rapid movements to anticipate an attack of the enemy, or
to be at least fully prepared for it. The fiery and enthusiastic young
Landgrave freely entered into these plans, which opened a tempting field to his
ambition, and discussed them with Zwingli, probably already at Marburg, and
afterwards in confidential letters, till the catastrophe at Cappel made an end
to the correspondence, and the projected alliance.862

The Wittenbergers, as already
remarked, would have nothing to do with political alliances unless it were an
alliance against foreign foes. They were monarchists and imperialists, and
loyally attached to Charles V., "the noble blood," as Luther called
him. They feared that an alliance with the Swiss would alienate him still more
from the Reformation, and destroy the prospect of reconciliation. In the same
year Luther wrote two vigorous works (one dedicated to Philip of Hesse) against
the Turks, in which, as a Christian, a citizen, and a patriot, he exhorted the German
princes to aid the Emperor in protecting the German fatherland against those
invaders whom he regarded as the Gog and Magog of prophecy, and as the
instruments of God’s wrath for the punishment of corrupt Christendom.863 He had a still stronger religious motive to discourage a colloquy.
He had denounced the Swiss divines as dangerous heretics, and was unwilling to
negotiate with them, except on terms of absolute surrender such as could not be
expected from men of honor and conscientious conviction.

The Wittenbergers, therefore,
received the invitation to a colloquy with distrust, and resisted it. Luther
declared that such a conference was useless, since he would not yield an inch
to his opponents. Melanchthon even suggested to the Elector that he should
forbid their attendance. They thought that "honorable Papists" should
be invited as judges on a question touching the real presence! But the Elector was unwilling to displease
the Landgrave, and commanded the Reformers to attend. When they arrived at the
Hessian frontier, Luther declared that nothing could induce him to cross it
without a safe-conduct from the Landgrave (which arrived in due time). They
reached Marburg on the last of September, three days after the Swiss.

How different the three historic
appearances of Luther in public! In the
Leipzig disputation with Eck, we see him struggling in the twilight for
emancipation from the bondage of popery. At Worms he stood before the Emperor,
with invincible courage, as the heroic witness of the liberty of conscience.
Marburg he entered reluctantly, at the noonday heat of his labors, in bad
humor, firmly set in his churchly faith, imperious and obstinate, to face the
Swiss Reformers, who were as honest and earnest as he, but more liberal and
conciliatory. In Leipzig he protested as a Catholic against the infallibility
of pope and council; in Worms he protested against the papal tyranny over the
Bible and private judgment; in Marburg he protested as a conservative churchman
against his fellow-Protestants, and in favor of the catholic faith in the
mystery of the sacrament.864 On all
occasions he was equally honest, firm, and immovable, true to his words at
Worms, "Here I stand: I cannot do otherwise." The conduct of the two
parties at that Conference is typical of the two confessions in their
subsequent dealings with each other.

The visitors stopped at an inn,
but were at once invited to lodge in the castle, and treated by the Landgrave
with princely hospitality.

The Reformed called upon the
Lutherans, but met with a cool reception. Luther spoke a kind word to
Oecolampadius; but when he first met his friend Bucer, who now sided with
Zwingli, he shook his hand, and said, smiling, and pointing his finger at him,
"You are a good-for-nothing knave."865

In that romantic old castle of
Marburg which overlooks the quaint city, and the beautiful and fertile valley
of the Lahn, the famous Conference was held on the first three days of October.
It was the first council among Protestants, and the first attempt to unite
them. It attracted general attention, and promised to become world-historical.866 Euricius Cordus, a professor of medicine at Marburg, addressed, in
a Latin poem, "the penetrating Luther, the gentle Oecolampadius, the
magnanimous Zwingli, the eloquent Melanchthon, the pious Schnepf, the brave
Bucer, the true-hearted Hedio," and all other divines who were assembled
in Marburg, with an appeal to heal the schism. "The church," he says,
"falls weeping at your feet, and begs you, by the mercies of Christ, to
consider the question with pure zeal for the welfare of believers, and to bring
about a conclusion of which the world may say that it proceeded from the Holy
Spirit." Very touching is the prayer with which Zwingli entered upon the
conference: "Fill us, O Lord and Father of us all, we beseech Thee, with
thy gentle Spirit, and dispel on both sides all the clouds of misunderstanding
and passion. Make an end to the strife of blind fury. Arise, O Christ, Thou Sun
of righteousness, and shine upon us. Alas! while we contend, we only too often
forget to strive after holiness which Thou requirest from us all. Guard us
against abusing our powers, and enable us to employ them with all earnestness
for the promotion of holiness."

§ 108. The Marburg Conference continued. Discussion and Result.

The work of the Conference began
on Friday, the 1st of October, with divine service in the chapel of the castle.
Zwingli preached on the providence of God, which he afterwards elaborated into
an important treatise, "De Providentia." It was intended for scholars
rather than the people; and Luther found fault with the introduction of Hebrew,
Greek, and Latin words into the pulpit. Luther, Bucer, and Osiander preached
the morning sermons on the following days; Luther, on his favorite doctrine of
justification by faith.

The Landgrave first arranged a
private interview between the lions and the lambs; that is, between Luther and
Oecolampadius, Zwingli and Melanchthon. The two pairs met after divine service,
in separate chambers, and conferred for several hours. The Wittenberg Reformers
catechised the Swiss about their views on the Trinity, original sin, and
baptism, and were in a measure relieved of their suspicion that they
entertained unsound views on these topics. Melanchthon had, a few months before
the Conference, written a very respectful letter to Oecolampadius (April 8,
1529), in which he regrets that the "horribilis dissensio de coena Domini" interfered with the
enjoyment of their literary and Christian friendship, and states his own view
of the eucharist very moderately and clearly to the effect that it was a
communion with the present Christ rather than a commemoration of the absent
Christ.867 In the
private conference with Zwingli, against whom he was strongly prejudiced, he is
reported to have yielded the main point of dispute, as regards the literal
interpretation of "This is my body," and the literal handing of
Christ’s body to his disciples, but added that he gave it to them "in a
certain mysterious manner."868 When Zwingli urged the ascension as an argument against the local
presence, Melanchthon said, "Christ has ascended indeed, but in order to
fill all things" (Eph. 4:10)." Truly," replied Zwingli,
"with his power and might, but not with his body." During the open
debate on the following days, Melanchthon observed a significant silence,
though twice asked by Luther to come to his aid when he felt exhausted.869 He made only a few remarks. He was, however, at that time, of one
mind with Luther, and entirely under his power. He was as strongly opposed to
an alliance with the Swiss and Strass-burgers, influenced in part by political
motives, being anxious to secure, if possible, the favor of Charles and
Ferdinand.870

Luther must have handled
Oecolampadius more severely; for the latter, in coming from the conference
room, whispered to Zwingli, "I am again in the hands of Dr. Eck" (as
at the colloquy in Baden in 1526).

The general discussion took
place on Saturday, the 2d of October, in a large hall (which cannot now be
identified with certainty).871 The Landgrave in plain dress appeared with his court as an eager
listener, but not as an arbitrator, and was seated at a separate table. The
official attendants on the Lutheran side were Luther (dressed as an Electoral
courtier) and Melanchthon, behind them Jonas and Cruciger of Witten-berg,
Myconius of Gotha, Osiander of Nuernberg, Stephen Agricola of Augsburg,
Brentius of Hall in Swabia; on the Reformed side Zwingli and Oecolampadius, and
behind them Bucer and Hedio of Strassburg: all men of eminent talent, learning,
and piety, and in the prime of manhood and usefulness. Luther and Zwingli were
forty-six, Oecolampadius forty-seven, Bucer thirty-eight, Hedio thirty-five,
Melanchthon thirty-two, the Landgrave only twenty-five years of age. Luther and
Melanchthon, Zwingli and Oecolampadius, as the chief disputants, sat at a
separate table, facing each other.

Besides these representative
theologians there were a number of invited guests, princes (including the
exiled Duke Ulrich of Wuerttemberg), noblemen, and scholars (among them Lambert
of Avignon). Zwingli speaks of twenty-four, Brentius of fifty to sixty,
hearers. Poor Carlstadt, who was then wandering about in Friesland, and forced
to sell his Hebrew Bible for bread, had asked for an invitation, but was
refused. Many others applied for admission, but were disappointed.872 Zwingli advocated the greatest publicity and the employment of a
recording secretary, but both requests were declined by Luther. Even the
hearers were not allowed to make verbatim reports. Zwingli, who could not
expect the Germans to understand his Swiss dialect, desired the colloquy to be
conducted in Latin, which would have placed him on an equality with Luther; but
it was decided to use the German language in deference to the audience.

John Feige, the chancellor of
the Landgrave, exhorted the theologians in an introductory address to seek only
the glory of Christ and the restoration of peace and union to the church.

The debate was chiefly
exegetical, but brought out no new argument. It was simply a recapitulation of
the preceding controversy, with less heat and more gentlemanly courtesy. Luther
took his stand on the words of institution in their literal sense: "This
is my body;" the Swiss, on the word of Christ: "It is the Spirit that
quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing; the words that I have spoken unto you
are spirit and are life."

Luther first rose, and declared
emphatically that he would not change his opinion on the real presence in the
least, but stand fast on it to the end of life. He called upon the Swiss to
prove the absence of Christ, but protested at the outset against arguments
derived from reason and geometry. To give pictorial emphasis to his
declaration, he wrote with a piece of chalk on the table in large characters
the words of institution, with which he was determined to stand or fall: "Hoc est corpus Meum."

Oecolampadius in reply said he
would abstain from philosophical arguments, and appeal to the Scriptures. He
quoted several passages which have an obviously figurative meaning, but
especially John 6:63, which in his judgment furnishes the key for the
interpretation of the words of institution, and excludes a literal understanding.
He employed this syllogism: Christ cannot contradict himself; he said,
"The flesh profiteth nothing," and thereby rejected the oral
manducation of his body; therefore he cannot mean such a manducation in the
Lord’s Supper.

Luther denied the second
proposition, and asserted that Christ did not reject oral, but only material
manducation, like that of the flesh of oxen or of swine. I mean a sublime
spiritual fruition, yet with the mouth. To the objection that bodily eating was
useless if we have the spiritual eating, he replied, If God should order me to
eat crab-apples or dung, I would do it, being assured that it would he
salutary. We must here close the eyes.

Here Zwingli interposed: God
does not ask us to eat crab-apples, or to do any thing unreasonable. We cannot
admit two kinds of corporal manducation; Christ uses the same word "to
eat," which is either spiritual or corporal. You admit that the spiritual
eating alone gives comfort to the soul. If this is the chief thing, let us not
quarrel about the other. He then read from the Greek Testament which he had
copied with his own hand, and used for twelve years, the passage John 6:52,
"How can this man give us his flesh to eat?" and Christ’s word, 6:63.

Luther asked him to read the
text in German or Latin, not in Greek. When Christ says, "The flesh
profiteth nothing," he speaks not of his flesh, but of ours.

Zwingli: The soul is fed with
the spirit, not with flesh.

Luther: We eat the body with the
mouth, not with the soul. If God should place rotten apples before me, I would
eat them.

Zwingli: Christ’s body then
would he a corporal, and not a spiritual, nourishment.

Luther: You are captious.

Zwingli: Not so; but you
contradict yourself.

Zwingli quoted a number of
figurative passages; but Luther always pointed his finger to the words of
institution, as he had written them on the table. He denied that the discourse,
John 6, had any thing to do with the Lord’s Supper.

At this point a laughable, yet
characteristic incident occurred. "Beg your pardon," said Zwingli,
"that passage [John 6:63] breaks your neck." Luther, understanding
this literally, said, "Do not boast so much. You are in Hesse, not in
Switzerland. In this country we do not break people’s necks. Spare such proud,
defiant words, till you get back to your Swiss."873

Zwingli: In Switzerland also
there is strict justice, and we break no man’s neck without trial. I use simply
a figurative expression for a lost cause.

The Landgrave said to Luther,
"You should not take offense at such common expressions." But the
agitation was so great that the meeting adjourned to the banqueting hall.

The discussion was resumed in
the afternoon, and turned on the christological question. I believe, said
Luther, that Christ is in heaven, but also in the sacrament, as substantially
as he was in the Virgin’s womb. I care not whether it be against nature and
reason, provided it be not against faith.

Oecolampadius: You deny the
metaphor in the words of institution, but you must admit a synecdoche. For
Christ does not say, This is bread and my body (as you hold), but simply, This
is my body.

Luther: A metaphor admits the existence of a sign only; but a
synecdoche admits the thing itself, as when I say, the sword is in the
scabbard, or the beer in the bottle.

Zwingli reasoned: Christ
ascended to heaven, therefore he cannot be on earth with his body. A body is
circumscribed, and cannot be in several places at once.

Luther: I care little about
mathematics.

The contest grew hotter, without
advancing, and was broken up by a call to the repast.

The next day, Sunday, Oct. 3, it
was renewed.

Zwingli maintained that a body
could not be in different places at once. Luther quoted the Sophists (the
Schoolmen) to the effect that there are different kinds of presence. The
universe is a body, and yet not in a particular place.

Zwingli: Ah, you speak of the
Sophists, doctor! Are you really
obliged to return to the onions and fleshpots of Egypt? He then cited from Augustin, who says,
"Christ is everywhere present as God; but as to his body, he is in
heaven."

Luther: You have Augustin and
Fulgentius on your side, but we have all the other fathers. Augustin was young
when he wrote the passage you quote, and he is obscure. We must believe the old
teachers only so far as they agree with the Word of God.

Oecolampadius: We, too, build on
the Word of God, not on the fathers; but we appeal to them to show that we
teach no novelties.874

Luther, pointing again his
finger to the words on the table: This is our text: you have not yet driven us
from it. We care for no other proof.

Oecolampadius: If this is the
case, we had better close the discussion.

The chancellor exhorted them to
come to an understanding.

Luther: There is only one way to
that. Let our adversaries believe as we do.

The Swiss: We cannot.

Luther: Well, then, I abandon
you to God’s judgment, and pray that he will enlighten you.

Oecolampadius: We will do the
same. You need it as much as we.

At this point both parties
mellowed down. Luther begged pardon for his harsh words, as he was a man of
flesh and blood. Zwingli begged Luther, with tearful eyes, to forgive him his
harsh words, and assured him that there were no men in the world whose
friendship he more desired than that of the Wittenbergers.875

Jacob Sturm and Bucer spoke in
behalf of Strassburg, and vindicated their orthodoxy, which had been impeached.
Luther’s reply was cold, and displeased the audience. He declared to the
Strassburgers, as well as the Swiss, "Your spirit is different from
ours."876

The Conference was ended. A
contagious disease, called the English sweat (sudor Anglicus), which attacked its victims with fever, sweat,
thirst, intense pain, and exhaustion, had suddenly broken out in Marburg as in
other parts of Germany, and caused frightful ravages that filled everybody with
alarm. The visitors were anxious to return home. So were the fathers of the
Council of Trent, when the Elector Moritz chased the Emperor through the Tyrol;
and in like manner the fathers of the Vatican Council hurried across the Alps
when France declared war against Germany, and left the Vatican decrees in the hands
of Italian infallibilists.

But the Landgrave once more
brought the guests together at his table on Sunday night, and urged upon every
one the supreme importance of coming to some understanding.

On Monday morning he arranged
another private conference between the Saxon and the Swiss Reformers. They met
for the last time on earth. With tears in his eyes, Zwingli approached Luther,
and held out the hand of brotherhood, but Luther declined it, saying again,
"Yours is a different spirit from ours." Zwingli thought that
differences in non-essentials, with unity in essentials, did not forbid
Christian brotherhood. "Let us," he said, "confess our union in
all things in which we agree; and, as for the rest, let us remember that we are
brethren. There will never be peace in the churches if we cannot bear
differences on secondary points." Luther deemed the corporal presence a
fundamental article, and construed Zwingli’s liberality into indifference to
truth. "I am astonished," he said, "that you wish to consider me
as your brother. It shows clearly that you do not attach much importance to
your doctrine." Melanchthon looked upon the request of the Swiss as a
strange inconsistency.877 Turning
to the Swiss, the Wittenbergers said, "You do not belong to the communion
of the Christian Church. We cannot acknowledge you as brethren." They were
willing, however, to include them in that universal charity which we owe to our
enemies.

The Swiss were ready to burst
over such an insult, but controlled their temper.

On the same day Luther wrote the
following characteristic letter to his wife: —

"Grace and peace in Christ.
Dear Lord Keth, I do you to know that our friendly colloquy in Marburg is at an
end, and that we are agreed in almost every point, except that the opposite
party wants to have only bread in the Lord’s Supper, and acknowledge the
spiritual presence of Christ in the same. To-day the Landgrave wants us to come
to an agreement, and, if not, to acknowledge each other as brethren and members
of Christ. He labors very zealousy for this end. But we want no brothership and
membership, only peace and good-will. I suppose to-morrow or day after
to-morrow we shall break up, and proceed to Schleitz in the Voigtland whither
his Electoral Grace has ordered us.

"Tell Herr Pommer
[Bugenhagen] that the best argument of Zwingli was that corpus non potest esse sine
loco: ergo Christi corpus non est in pane. Of Oecolampadius: This sacramentum est signum
corporis Christi.
I think God has blinded their eyes.

"I am very busy, and the
messenger is in a hurry. Give to all a good night, and pray for us. We are all
fresh and hale, and live like princes. Kiss for me little Lena and little Hans
(Lensgen und Hänsgen).

"People are crazy with the
fright of the sweating plague. Yesterday about fifty took sick, and two
died."878

At last Luther yielded to the
request of the Landgrave and the Swiss, retired to his closet, and drew up a
common confession in the German language. It consists of fifteen articles
expressing the evangelical doctrines on the Trinity, the person of Christ, his
death and resurrection, original sin, justification by faith, the work of the
Holy Spirit, and the sacraments.

The two parties agreed on
fourteen articles, and even in the more important part of the fifteenth article
which treats of the Lord’s Supper as follows: —

We all believe, with regard to
the Supper of our blessed Lord Jesus Christ, that it ought to be celebrated in
both kinds, according to the institution of Christ; that the mass is not a work
by which a Christian obtains pardon for another man, whether dead or alive;
that the sacrament of the altar is the sacrament of the very body and very
blood of Jesus Christ; and that the spiritual manducation of this body and
blood is specially necessary to every true Christian. In like manner, as to the
use of the sacrament, we are agreed that, like the word, it was ordained of
Almighty God, in order that weak consciences might be excited by the Holy Ghost
to faith and charity.

"And although at present we
are not agreed on the question whether the real body and blood of Christ are
corporally present in the bread and wine, yet both parties shall cherish
Christian charity for one another, so far as the conscience of each will
permit; and both parties will earnestly implore Almighty God to strengthen us
by his Spirit in the true understanding. Amen."879

The Landgrave urged the
insertion that each party should show Christian charity to the other. The
Lutherans assented to this only on condition that the clause be added: "as
far as the conscience of each will permit."

The articles were read,
considered, and signed on the same day by Luther, Melanchthon, Osiander,
Agricola, Brentius, on the part of the Lutherans; and by Zwingli,
Oecolampadius, Bucer, and Hedio, on the part of the Reformed. They were printed
on the next day, and widely circulated.880

On the fifth day of October, in
the afternoon, the guests took leave of each other with a shake of hands. It
was not the hand of brotherhood, but only of friendship, and not very cordial
on the part of the Lutherans. The Landgrave left Marburg on the same day, early
in the morning, with a painful feeling of disappointment.

Luther returned to Wittenberg by
way of Schleitz, where he met the Elector John by appointment, and revised the
Marburg Articles so as to adapt them to his creed, and so far to weaken the
consensus.

Both parties claimed the
victory. Zwingli complained in a letter to Vadian of the overbearing and
contumacious spirit of Luther, and thought that the truth (i.e., his view of
it) had prevailed, and that Luther was vanquished before all the world after
proclaiming himself invincible. He rejoiced in the agreement which must destroy
the hope of the papists that Luther would return to them.

Luther, on the other hand,
thought that the Swiss had come over to him half way, that they had humbled
themselves, and begged his friendship. "There is no brotherly unity among
us," he said in the pulpit of Wittenberg after his return from Mar-burg,
"but a good friendly concord; they seek from us what they need, and we
will help them."

Nearly all the contemporary
reports describe the Conference as having been much more friendly and
respectful than was expected from the preceding controversy. The speakers
addressed each other as "Liebster Herr," "Euer Liebden,"
and abstained from terms of opprobrium. The Devil was happily ignored in the
interviews; no heresy was charged, no anathema hurled. Luther found that the
Swiss were not such bad people as he had imagined, and said even in a letter to
Bullinger (1538), that Zwingli impressed him at Marburg as "a very good
man" (optimus
vir). Brentius,
as an eye-witness, reports that Luther and Zwingli appeared as if they were
brothers. Jonas described the Reformed leaders during the Conference as
follows:881"Zwingli has a certain rusticity and a
little arrogance.882 In
Oecolampadius there is an admirable good-nature and clemency.883 Hedio has no less humanity and liberality of spirit; but Bucer
possesses the cunning of a fox,884that knows how to give himself
the air of acumen and prudence. They are all learned men, no doubt, and more
formidable opponents than the papists; but Zwingli seems well versed in
letters, in spite of Minerva and the Muses." He adds that the Landgrave
was the most attentive hearer.

The laymen who attended the
Conference seem to have been convinced by the Swiss arguments. The Landgrave
declared that he would now believe the simple words of Christ, rather than the
subtle interpretations of men. He desired Zwingli to remove to Marburg, and
take charge of the ecclesiastical organization of Hesse. Shortly before his
death he confessed that Zwingli had convinced him at Marburg. But more
important is the conversion of Lambert of Avignon, who had heretofore been a
Lutheran, but could not resist the force of the arguments on the other side.
"I had firmly resolved," he wrote to a friend soon after the
Conference, "not to listen to the words of men, or to allow myself to be influenced
by the favor of men, but to be like a blank paper on which the finger of God
should write his truth. He wrote those doctrines on my heart which Zwingli
developed out of the word of God." Even the later change of Melanchthon,
who declined the brotherhood with the Swiss as strongly as Luther, may perhaps
be traced to impressions which he received at Marburg.

If the leaders of the two
evangelical confessions could meet to-day on earth, they would gladly shake
hands of brotherhood, as they have done long since in heaven.

The Conference did not effect
the desired union, and the unfortunate strife broke out again. Nevertheless, it
was by no means a total failure. It prepared the way for the Augsburg
Confession, the chief symbol of the Lutheran Church. More than this, it served
as an encouragement to peace movements of future generations.885 It produced the first formulated consensus between the two
confessions in fourteen important articles, and in the better part of the
fifteenth, leaving only the corporal presence and oral manducation in dispute.
It was well that such a margin was left. Without liberty in non-essentials,
there can never be a union among intelligent Christians. Good and holy men will
always differ on the mode of the real presence, and on many other points of
doctrine, as well as government and worship. The time was not ripe for
evangelical catholicity; but the spirit of the document survived the controversies,
and manifests itself wherever Christian hearts and minds rise above the narrow
partition walls of sectarian bigotry. Uniformity, even if possible, would not
be desirable. God’s ways point to unity in diversity, and diversity in unity.

It was during the fiercest
dogmatic controversies and the horrors of the Thirty Years’ War, that a
prophetic voice whispered to future generations the watchword of Christian
peacemakers, which was unheeded in a century of intolerance, and forgotten in a
century of indifference, but resounds with increased force in a century of
revival and re-union:

"In essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty, in all things
charity."

NOTE

On
the Origin of the Sentence: "In necessariis unitas, in non-necessariis (or, dubiis) libertas, in utrisque (or, omnibus) caritas."

This famous motto of Christian
Irenics, which I have slightly modified in the text, is often falsely
attributed to St. Augustin (whose creed would not allow it, though his heart
might have approved of it), but is of much later origin. It appears for the
first time in Germany, a.d. 1627
and 1628, among peaceful divines of the Lutheran and German Reformed churches,
and found a hearty welcome among moderate divines in England.

The authorship has recently been
traced to Rupertus Meldenius, an
otherwise unknown divine, and author of a remarkable tract in which the
sentence first occurs. He gave classical expression to the irenic sentiments of
such divines as Calixtus of Helmstädt, David Pareus of Heidelberg, Crocius of Marburg,
John Valentin Andrew of Wuerttemberg, John Arnd of Zelle, Georg Frank of
Francfort-on-the Oder, the brothers Bergius in Brandenburg, and of the
indefatigable traveling evangelist of Christian union, John Dury, and Richard
Baxter. The tract of Meldenius bears the title, Paraenesis votiva pro Pace
Ecclesiae ad Theologos Augustanae Confessionis, Auctore Ruperto Meldenio
Theologo, 62
pp. in 4to, without date and place of publication. It probably appeared in 1627
at Francfort-on-the Oder, which was at that time the seat of theological
moderation. Mr. C. R Gillett (librarian of the Union Theological Seminary)
informs me that the original copy, which he saw in Berlin, came from the
University of Francfort-on-the Oder after its transfer to Breslau.

Dr. Luecke republished the
tract, in 1850, from a reprint in Pfeiffer’s Variorum Auctorum Miscellanea Theologiae (Leipzig, 1736, pp. l36–258), as
an appendix to his monograph on the subject (pp. 87–145). He afterwards
compared it with a copy of the original edition in the Electoral library at
Cassel. Another original copy was discovered by Dr. Klose in the city library
of Hamburg (1858), and a third one by Dr. Briggs and Mr. Gillett in the royal
library of Berlin (1887).

The author of this tract is an
orthodox Lutheran, who was far from the idea of ecclesiastical union, but
anxious for the peace of the church and zealous for practical scriptural piety
in place of the dry and barren scholasticism of his time. He belongs, as Luecke
says ("Stud. und Kritiken," 1851, p. 906), to the circle of
"those noble, genial, and hearty evangelical divines, like John Arnd,
Valentin Andrew, and others, who deeply felt the awful misery of the
fatherland, and especially the inner distractions of the church in their age,
but who knew also and pointed out the way of salvation and peace." He was
evidently a highly cultivated scholar, at home in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, and
in controversial theology. He excels in taste and style the forbidding
literature of his age. He condemns the pharisaical hypocrisy, the folodoxiva, filargiva, and filoneikiva of the theologians, and exhorts
them first of all to humility and love. By too much controversy about the
truth, we are in danger of losing the truth itself. Nimium altercando amittitur
Veritas.
"Many," he says, "contend for the corporal presence of Christ
who have not Christ in their hearts." He sees no other way to concord than
by rallying around the living Christ as the source of spiritual life. He dwells
on the nature of God as love, and the prime duty of Christians to love one
another, and comments on the seraphic chapter of Paul on charity (1 Cor. 13).
He discusses the difference between necessaria and non-necessaria. Necessary dogmas are, (1) articles of faith necessary to salvation; (2)
articles derived from clear testimonies of the Bible; (3) articles decided by
the whole church in a synod or symbol; (4) articles held by all orthodox
divines as necessary. Not necessary, are dogmas (1) not contained in the Bible;
(2) not belonging to the common inheritance of faith; (3) not unanimously
taught by theologians; (4) left doubtful by grave divines; (5) not tending to
piety, charity, and edification. He concludes with a defense of John Arnd
(1555–1621), the famous author of "True Christianity," against the
attacks of orthodox fanatics, and with a fervent and touching prayer to Christ
to come to the rescue of his troubled church (Rev. 22:17).

The golden sentence occurs in
the later half of the tract (p. 128 in Luecke’s edition), incidentally and in
hypothetical form, as follows: —

The same sentiment, but in a
shorter sententious and hortative form, occurs in a book of Gregor Frank, entitled Consideratio theologica de
gradibus necessitatis dogmatumt Christianorum quibus fidei, spei et charitatis
officia reguntur,
Francf. ad Oderam, 1628. Frank (1585–1651) was first a Lutheran, then a
Reformed theologian, and professor at Francfort. He distinguishes three kinds
of dogmas: (1) dogmas necessary for salvation: the clearly revealed truths of
the Bible; (2) dogmas which are derived by clear and necessary inference from
the Scriptures and held by common consent of orthodox Christendom; (3) the
specific and controverted dogmas of the several confessions. He concludes the
discussion with this exhortation: —

Bertheau deems it uncertain
whether Meldenius or Frank was the author. But the question is decided by the
express testimony of Conrad, Berg, who was a colleague of Frank in the same
university between 1627 and 1628, and ascribes the sentence to Meldenius.

Fifty years later Richard
Baxter, the Puritan pacificator in England, refers to the sentence, Nov. 15,
1679, in the preface to The True and Only Way of Concord of All the
Christian Churches, London, 1680, in a slightly different form: "I
once more repeat to you the pacificator’s old despised words, ’Si in necessariis sit [esset]
unitas, in non necessariis libertas, in utrisque charitas, optimo certo loco
essent res nostrae.’ "

Luecke was the first to quote
this passage, but overlooked a direct reference of Baxter to Meldenius in the
same tract on p. 25. This Dr. Briggs discovered, and quotes as follows: —

"Were there no more said of
all this subject, but that of Rupertus Meldenius, cited by Conradus Bergius, it
might end all schism if well understood and used, viz." Then follows the
sentence. Baxter also refers to Meldenius on the preceding page. This
strengthens the conclusion that Meldenius was the "pacificator." For
we are referred here to the testimony of a contemporary of Meldenius. Samuel
Werenfels, a distinguished irenical divine of Basel, likewise mentions Meldenius
and Conrad Bergius together as irenical divines, and testes veritatis, and quotes several passages
from the Paraenesis
votiva.

Conrad Bergius (Berg), from whom
Baxter derived his knowledge of the sentence, was professor in the university
of Frankfurt-an-der-Oder, and then a preacher at Bremen. He and his brother
John Berg (1587–1658), court chaplain of Brandenburg, were irenical divines of
the German Reformed Church, and moderate Calvinists. John Berg attended the
Leipzig Colloquy of March, 1631, where Lutheran and Reformed divines agreed on
the basis of the revised Augsburg Confession of 1540 in every article of
doctrine, except the corporal presence and oral manducation. The colloquy was
in advance of the spirit of the age, and had no permanent effect. See Schaff, Creeds
of Christendom, I. 558 sqq., and Niemeyer, Collectio Confessionum in
Ecclesiis Reformatis publicatarum, p. LXXV. and 653–668.

Dr. Briggs has investigated the
writings of Conrad Bergius and his associates in the royal library of Berlin.
In his "Praxis
Catholica divini canonis contra quasvis haereses et schismata," etc., which appeared at
Bremen in 1639, Bergius concludes with the classical word of "Rupertus
Meldenius Theologus," and a brief comment on it. This is quoted by Baxter
in the form just given. In the autumn of 1627 Bergius preached two discourses
at Frankfurt on the subject of Christian union, which accord with the sentence,
and appeared in 1628 with the consent of the theological faculty. They were
afterwards incorporated in his Praxis Catholica. He was thoroughly at home in the polemics and irenics
of his age, and can be relied on as to the authorship of the sentence.

But who was Meldenius? This is still an unsolved question. Possibly
he took his name from Melden, a little village on the borders of Bohemia and
Silesia. His voice was drowned, and his name forgotten, for two centuries, but
is now again heard with increased force. I subscribe to the concluding words of
my esteemed colleague, Dr. Briggs: "Like a mountain stream that disappears
at times under the rocks of its bed, and re-appears deeper down in the valley,
so these long-buried principles of peace have reappeared after two centuries of
oblivion, and these irenical theologians will be honored by those who live in a
better age of the world, when Protestant irenics have well-nigh displaced the
old Protestant polemics and scholastics."

The origin of the sentence was
first discussed by a Dutch divine, Dr. Van der Hoeven of Amsterdam, in 1847;
then by Dr. Luecke of Göttingen, Ueber das Alter, den Verfasser, die
ursprungliche Form und den wahren Sinn des kirchlichen Friedenspruchs ’In
necessariis unitas,’ etc., Göttingen, 1850 (XXII. and 146 pages); with supplementary
remarks in the "Studien und Kritiken" for 1851, p. 905–938. Luecke
first proved the authorship of Meldenius. The next steps were taken by Dr.
Klose, in the first edition of Herzog’s "Theol. Encycl," sub Meltlenius,
vol. IX. (1858), p. 304 sq., and by Dr. Carl Bertheau, in the second edition of
Herzog, IX. (1881), p. 528–530. Dr. Brigas has furnished additional information
in two articles in the "Presbyterian Review," vol. VIII., New York,
1857, pp. 496–499, and 743–746.

§ 109. Luther’s Last Attack on the Sacramentarians. His Relation
to Calvin.

We anticipate the concluding act
of the sad controversy of Luther with his Protestant opponents. It is all the
more painful, since Zwingli and Oecolampadius were then sleeping in the grave;
but it belongs to a full knowledge of the great Reformer.

The Marburg Conference did not
really reconcile the parties, or advance the question in dispute; but the
conflict subsided for a season, and was thrown into the background by other
events. The persistent efforts of Bucer and Hedio to bring about a
reconciliation between Wittenberg and Zuerich soothed Luther, and excited in
him the hope that the Swiss would give up their heresy, as he regarded it. But
in this hope he was disappointed. The Swiss could not accept the
"Wittenberg Concordia" of 1536, because it was essentially Lutheran
in the assertion of the corporal presence and oral manducation.

A year and a half before his
death, Luther broke out afresh, to the grief of Melanchthon and other friends,
in a most violent attack on the Sacramentarians, the "Short Confession on
the Holy Sacrament" (1544).886 It was occasioned by Schwenkfeld,887and by the rumor that Luther had
changed his view, because he had abolished the elevation and adoration of the
host.888 Moreover
he learned that Dévay, his former student, and inmate of his house, smuggled
the sacramenta-rian doctrine under Luther’s name into Hungary.889 He was also displeased with the reformation program of Bucer and
Melanchthon for the diocese of Cologne (1543), because it stated the doctrine
of the eucharist without the specific Lutheran features, so that he feared it
would give aid and comfort to the Sacramentarians.890 These provocations and vexations, in connection with sickness and
old age, combined to increase his irritability, and to sour his temper. They
must be taken into account for all understanding of his last document on the
eucharist. It is the severest of all, and forms a parallel to his last work
against the papacy, of the same year, which surpasses in violence all he ever
wrote against the Romish Antichrist.891

The "Short Confession"
contains no argument, but the strongest possible reaffirmation of his faith in
the real pres-ence, and a declaration of his total and final separation from
the Sacramentarians and their doctrine, with some concluding remarks on the
elevation of the sacrament. Standing on the brink of the grave, and in view of
the judgment-seat, he solemnly condemns all enemies of the sacraments wherever
they are.892 "Much rather," he says, "would I be torn to pieces,
and burnt a hundred times, than be of one mind and will with Stenkefeld
[Schwenkfeld], Zwingel, Carlstadt, Oecolampad, and all the rest of the Schwärmer,
or tolerate their doctrine." He overwhelms them with terms of opprobrium,
and coins new ones which cannot be translated into decent English. He calls
them heretics, hypocrites, liars, blasphemers, soul-murderers, sinners unto
death, bedeviled all over.893 He ceased
to pray for them, and left them to their fate. At one time he had expressed
some regard for Oecolampadius,894and even for Zwingli, and
sincere grief at his tragic death.895 But in this last book he repeatedly refers to his death as a
terrible judgment of God, and doubts whether he was saved.896 He was horrified at Zwingli’s belief in the salvation of the pious
heathen, which he learned from his last exposition of the Christian faith,
addressed to the king of France. "If such godless heathen," he says,
"as Socrates, Aristides, yea, even the horrible Numa who introduced all kinds
of idolatry in Rome897(as St. Augustin writes), were saved, there is no
need of God, Christ, gospel, Scriptures, baptism, sacrament, or Christian faith."
He thinks that Zwingli either played the hypocrite when he professed so many
Christian articles at Marburg, or fell away, and has become worse than a
heathen, and ten times worse than he was as a papist.

This attitude Luther retained to
the end. It is difficult to say whom he hated most, the papists or the
Sacramentarians. On the subject of the real presence he was much farther
removed from the latter. He remarks once that he would rather drink blood alone
with the papists than wine alone with the Zwinglians. A few days before his
death, he wrote to his friend, Pastor Probst in Bremen: "Blessed is the
man that walketh not in the counsel of the Sacramentarians, nor standeth
in the way of the Zwinglians, nor sitteth in the seat of the Zurichers."898 Thus he turned the blessing of the first Psalm into a curse, in
accordance with his growing habit of cursing the pope and the devil when
praying to God. He repeatedly speaks of this habit, especially in reciting the
Lord’s Prayer, and justifies it as a part of his piety.899

It is befitting that with this
last word against the Sacramentarians should coincide in time and spirit his
last and most violent attack upon the divine gift of reason, which he had
himself so often and so effectually used as his best weapon, next to the Word
of God. On Jan. 17, 1546, he ascended the pulpit of Wittenberg for the last
time, and denounced reason as the damned whore of the Devil." The fanatics
and Sacramentarians boast of it when they ask: "How can this man give us
his flesh to eat?" Hear ye the Son
of God who says: "This is my body," and crush the serpent beneath
your feet.900

Six days later Luther left the
city of his public labors for the city of his birth, and died in peace at
Eisleben, Feb. 18. 1546, holding fast to his faith, and commending his soul to
his God and Redeemer.

In view of these last utterances
we must, reluctantly, refuse credit to the story that Luther before his death
remarked to Melanchthon: "Dear Philip, I confess that the matter of the
Lord’s Supper has been overdone;"901and that, on being asked to correct
the evil, and to restore peace to the church, he replied: "I often thought
of it; but then people might lose confidence in my whole doctrine. I leave the
matter in the hands of the Lord. Do what you can after my death."902

But it is gratifying to know
that Luther never said one unkind word of Calvin, who was twenty-five years
younger. He never saw him, but read some of his books, and heard of him through
Melanchthon. In a letter to Bucer, dated Oct. 14, 1539, he sent his respectful
salutations to John Sturm and John Calvin, who lived at that time in
Strassburg, and added that he had read their books with singular delight. This
includes his masterly answer to the letter of Bishop Sadolet (1539).903 Melanchthon sent salutations from Luther and Bugenhagen to Calvin,
and informed him that he was in high favor with Luther,"904notwithstanding the difference
of views on the real presence, and that Luther hoped for better opinions, but
was willing to bear something from such a good man.905 Calvin had expressed his views on the Lord’s Supper in the first
edition of his Institutes, which appeared in 1536,906incidentally also in his answer
to Sadolet, which Luther read "with delight,"907and more fully in a special
treatise, De
Coena Domini,
which was published in French at Strassburg, 1541, and then in Latin, 1545.908 Luther must have known these views. He is reported to have seen a
copy of Calvin’s tract on the eucharist in a bookstore at Wittenberg, and,
after reading it, made the remark: "The author is certainly a learned and
pious man: if Zwingli and Oecolampadius had from the start declared themselves
in this way, there would probably not have arisen such a controversy."909

Calvin returned Luther’s
greetings through Melanchthon, and sent him two pamphlets with a letter, dated
Jan. 21, 1545, addressing him as "my much respected father," and
requesting him to solve the scruples of some converted French refugees. he
expresses the wish that "he might enjoy for a few hours the happiness of
his society," though this was impossible on earth.

Melanchthon, fearing a renewal
of the eucharistic controversy, had not the courage to deliver this letter—the
only one of Calvin to Luther—"because," he says, "Doctor Martin
is suspicious, and dislikes to answer such questions as were proposed to
him."910

Calvin regretted "the
vehemence of Luther’s natural temperament, which was so apt to boil over in
every direction," and to "flash his lightning sometimes also upon the
servants of the Lord;" but he always put him above Zwingli, and exhorted
the Zurichers to moderation. When he heard of the last attack of Luther, he
wrote a noble letter to Bullinger, Nov. 25, 1544, in which he says:911—

"I hear that Luther has at
length broken forth in fierce invective, not so much against you as against the
whole of us. On the present occasion, I dare scarce venture to ask you to keep
silence, because it is neither just that innocent persons should thus be
harassed, nor that they should be denied the opportunity of clearing
themselves; neither, on the other hand, is it easy to determine whether it
would be prudent for them to do so. But of this I do earnestly desire to put
you in mind, in the first place, that you would consider how eminent a man
Luther is, and his excellent endow-ments, with what strength of mind and
resolute constancy, with how great skill, with what efficiency and power of
doctrinal statement, he hath hither-to devoted his whole energy to overthrow
the reign of Antichrist, and at the same time to diffuse far and near the
doctrine of salvation. Often have I been wont to declare, that even although he
were to call me a devil, I should still not the less esteem and acknowledge him
as an illustrious servant of God.912... This, therefore, I would
beseech you to consider first of all, along with your colleagues, that you have
to do with a most distin-guished servant of Christ, to whom we are all of us
largely indebted. That, besides, you will do yourselves no good by quarreling,
except that you may afford some sport to the wicked, so that they may triumph
not so much over us as over the gospel. If they see us rending each other
asunder, they then give full credit to what we say, but when with one consent
and with one voice we preach Christ, they avail themselves unwarrantably of our
inherent weakness to cast reproach upon our faith. I wish, therefore, that you
would consider and reflect on these things, rather than on what Luther has
deserved by his violence; lest that may happen to you which Paul threatens,
that by biting and devouring one another, ye be consumed one of another. Even
should he have provoked us, we ought rather to decline the contest than to
increase the wound by the general shipwreck of the church."

This is the wisest Christian
answer from Geneva to the thunderbolts of Wittenberg.

§ 110. Reflections on the Ethics of the Eucharistic Controversy.

Dogmatics and ethics, faith and
conduct, should agree like the teaching and example of Christ from which they
are to be drawn. But, in practice, they often conflict. History shows us many
examples of ungodly champions of orthodoxy and godly champions of heterodoxy,
of unholy churchmen and holy dissenters. The angel of Ephesus is commended for
zeal against false apostles, and censured for leaving the first love; while the
angel of Thyatira is praised for his good works, and reproved for tolerating
error. Some are worse than their belief, and others are better than their
misbelief or unbelief.

Luther and Zwingli are by no
means opposed to each other as orthodox and heretic; they were essentially
agreed in all fundamental articles of the evangelical faith, as the Marburg
Conference proved. The difference between them is only a little more Catholic
orthodoxy and intolerance in Luther, and a little more Christian charity and
liberality in Zwingli. This difference is characteristic of the Reformers and
of the denominations which they represent.

Luther had a sense of
superiority, and claimed the credit of having begun the work of the Reformation.
He supposed that the Swiss were indebted to him for what little knowledge they
had of the gospel; while, in fact, they were as independent of him as the Swiss
Republic was of the German Empire, and knew the gospel as well as he.913

But it would be great injustice
to attribute his conduct to obstinacy and pride, or any selfish motive. It
proceeded from his inmost conviction. He regarded the real presence as a
fundamental article of faith, inseparably connected with the incarnation, the
union of the two natures of Christ, and the mystical union of believers with
his divine-human personality. He feared that the denial of this article would
consistently lead to the rejection of all mysteries, and of Christianity
itself. He deemed it, moreover, most dangerous and horrible to depart from what
had been the consensus of the Christian Church for so many centuries. His piety
was deeply rooted in the historic Catholic faith, and it cost him a great
struggle to break loose from popery. In the progress of the eucharistic
controversy, all his Catholic instincts and abhorrence of heresy were aroused
and intensified. In his zeal he could not do justice to his opponents, or
appreciate their position. His sentiments are shared by millions of pious and
devout Lutherans to this day, whose conscience forbids them to commune with
Christians of Reformed churches.914 We may lament their narrowness, but must.respect their conviction,
as we do the conviction of the far larger number of Roman Catholics, who
devoutly believe in the miracle of transubstantiation and the sacrifice of the
mass.

In addition to Luther’s dogmatic
standpoint we must take into account his ignorance of the true character of the
Swiss, and their real doctrine. He had hardly heard of the Swiss Reformation
when the controversy began. He did not even spell Zwingli’s name correctly (he
always calls him "Zwingel"), and could not easily understand his
Swiss dialect.915 He made a
radical mistake by confounding him with Carlstadt and the fanatics. He charged
him with reducing the Lord’s Supper to a common meal, and bread and wine to
empty signs; and, although he found out his mistake at Marburg, he returned to
it again in his last book, adding the additional charge of hypocrisy or
apostasy. He treated him as a heathen, yea, worse than a heathen, as he treated
Erasmus.

Zwingli was clear-headed,
self-possessed, jejune, and sober (even in his radical departures from Rome),
and farther removed from fanaticism than Luther himself. He was a pupil of the
classical and humanistic school of Erasmus; he had never been so deeply rooted
in the mediaeval faith, and it cost him much less trouble than Luther to break
off from the old church; he was a man of reflection rather than of intuition,
and had no mystic vein, but we may say a rationalistic bent. Nevertheless, he
was as loyal to Christ, and believed in the Word of God and the supernatural as
firmly, as Luther; and the Reformed churches to this day are as pure, faithful,
devoted, and active in Christian works as any, and less affected by rationalism
than the Lutheran, in part for the very reason that they allow reason its
legitimate influence in dogmatic questions. If Zwingli believed in the
salvation of the pious heathen and unbaptized infants, it was not because he
doubted the absolute necessity of the saving grace of Christ, which he very
strongly asserted, but simply because he extended this grace beyond the
boundaries of the visible church, and the ordinary means of grace; and on this
point, as on others, he anticipated modern ideas. He was inferior to Luther in
genius, and depth of mind and heart, but his superior in tolerance, liberality,
and courtesy; and in these qualities also he was in advance of his age, and has
the sympathies of the best modern culture.

Making every allowance for
Luther’s profound religious conviction, and for the misunderstanding of his
opponent, nothing can justify the spirit and style of Luther’s polemics,
especially his last book against the sacramentarians. He drew his inspiration
for it from the imprecatory Psalms, not from the Sermon on the Mount. He spoke
the truth in hatred and wrath, not in love.

This betrays an organic defect
in his reformation; namely, the over-estimate of dogmatics over ethics, and a
want of discipline and self-government. In the same year in which he wrote his
fiercest book against the Sacramentarians, he seriously contemplated leaving
Wittenberg as a veritable Sodom: so bad was the state of morals, according to
his own testimony, in the very centre of his influence.916 It required a second reformation, and such men as Arnd, Andreae,
Spener. and Franke, to supplement the one-sided Lutheran orthodoxy by practical
piety. Calvin, on the other hand, left at his death the church of Geneva in
such a flourishing condition that John Knox pronounced it the best school of
Christ since the days of the Apostles, and that sixty years later John Valentin
Andreae, one of the noblest and purest Lutheran divines of the seventeenth
century, from personal observation held it up to the Lutheran Church as a model
for imitation.

Luther’s polemics had a bad
effect on the Lutheran Church. He set in motion that theological fury which
raged for several generations after his death, and persecuted some of the best
men in it, from Melanchthon down to Spener.

His blind followers, in their
controversies among themselves and with the Reformed, imitated his faults,
without his genius and originality; and in their zeal for what they regarded the
pure doctrine, they forgot the common duties of courtesy and kindness which we
owe even to an enemy.917

We may quote here a
well-considered judgment of Dr. Dorner, one of the ablest and profoundest
evangelical divines of Germany, who says in a confidential letter to his
lifelong friend, Bishop Martensen of Denmark, —

"I am more and more
convinced that the deepest defect of Lutheran churchism heretofore has been a
lack of the full appreciation of the ethical element of Christianity. This
becomes manifest so often in the manner of the Lutheran champions. There is
lacking the tenderness of conscience and thorough moral culture which deals
conscientiously with the opponent. Justification by faith is made to cover, in
advance, all sins, even the future ones; and this is only another form of
indulgence. The Lutheran doctrine leads, if we look at the principle, to an
establishment of ethics on the deepest foundation. But many treat
justification, not only as the begin-ning, but also as the goal. Hence we see
not seldom the justified and the old man side by side, and the old man is not a
bit changed. Lutherans who show in their literary and social conduct the stamp
of the old Adam would deal more strictly with themselves, and fear to fall from
grace by such conduct, if they had a keener conscience, and could see the
neces-sary requirements of the principle of justification; for then they would
shrink from such conduct as a sin against conscience. But the doctrine of
justification is often misused for lulling the conscience to sleep, instead of
quickening it."918

Zwingli’s conduct towards
Luther, judged from the ethical point of view, is much more gentlemanly and
Christian, though by no means perfect. He, too, misunderstood and
misrepresented Luther when he charged him with teaching a local presence and a carnal
eating of Christ’s body. He, too, knew how to be severe, and to use the
rapier and the knife against the club and sledge-hammer of the Wittenberg
Reformer. But he never forgot, even in the heat of controversy, the great
services of Luther, and more than once paid him the tribute of sincere
admiration.

"For a thousand
years," says Zwingli, "no mightier investigator of the Holy
Scriptures has appeared than Luther. No one has equaled him in manly and
immovable courage with which he attacked popery. But whose work is it? God’s, or Luther’s? Ask Luther himself, and he will say God’s.
He traces his doctrine to God and his eternal Word. As far as I have read his
writings (although I have often purposely abstained from doing so), I find them
well founded in the Scriptures: his only weak point is, that he yields too much
to the Romanists in the matter of the sacraments, and the confession to the
priest, and in tolerating the images in the churches. If he is sharp and racy
in speech, it comes from a pious, honest heart, and a flaming love for the
truth .... Others have come to know the true religion, but no one has ventured
to attack the Goliath with his formidable armor; but Luther alone, as a true
David, anointed by God, hurled the stones taken from the heavenly brook so
skillfully that the giant fell prostrate on the ground. Therefore let us never
cease to sing with joy: ’Saul has slain his thousands, and David his ten
thousands’ (1 Sam. 18:7). He was the Hercules who slew the Roman boar .... I
have always been grateful to my teachers, how much more to that excellent man
whom I can never expect to equal in honor and merit! With no men on earth would I rather he agreed than with the
Wittenbergers .... Many have found the true religion before Luther became
famous; I have learnt the gospel from the same fountain of the Scriptures, and
began to preach it in 1516 (at Einsiedeln), when I diligently studied and
copied with mine own hand the Greek epistles of Paul,919 before I heard the name of Luther. He preaches Christ, so do I,
thanks to God. And I will be called by no other name than that of my Captain
Christ, whose soldiers we are."920

I may add here the impartial
testimony of Dr. Köstlin, the best biographer of Luther, and himself a
Lutheran: —

"Zwingli knew how to keep
himself under control. Even where he is indignant, and intentionally sharp and
pointed, he avoids the tone of passionate excitement, and uses the calm and
urbane language of a gentleman of humanistic culture, and thereby proves his
superiority over his opponent, without justifying the suspicion of Luther that
he was uncertain in his own mind, and that the attitude he assumed was only a
feint. His polemics forms thus the complete opposite to Luther’s book, ’That
the words of Christ,’ etc. Yet it presents also another aspect. Zwingli
characterizes, with select words of disregard, the writers and contents of the Syngramma,
to which Luther had given his assent, and clearly hints at Luther’s wrath,
spite, jealousy, audacity, and other faults poorly concealed under the cover of
bravery, constancy, etc.; yea, here and there he calls his arguments ’childish’
and ’fantastic,’ etc. Hence his new writings were by no means so ’friendly’ as
the title indicates. What is more important, we miss in them a sense for the
deeper, truly religious motives of Luther, as much as we miss in Luther an
appreciation of like motives in Zwingli .... He sees in Luther obstinate
blindness, while Luther discovered in him a devilish spirit."921

§ 111. The Eucharistic Theories compared. Luther, Zwingli, Calvin.

We now present, for the sake of
clearness, though at the risk of some repetition, the three Protestant theories
on the real presence, with the chief arguments.

Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin
agree, negatively, in opposition to the dogma of transubstantiation, the
sacrifice of the mass, and the withdrawal of the cup from the laity; positively,
in these essential points: the divine institution and perpetuity of the Lord’s
Supper, the spiritual presence of Christ, the commemorative character of the
ordinance as the celebration of Christ’s atoning sacrifice, its importance as
the highest act of worship and communion with Christ, and its special blessing
to all who worthily partake of it.

They differ on three points,—the
mode of Christ’s presence (whether corporal, or spiritual); the organ of
receiving his body and blood (whether by the mouth, or by faith); and the
extent of this reception (whether by all, or only by believers). The last point
has no practical religious value, though it follows from the first, and stands
or falls with it. The difference is logical rather than religious. The Lord’s
Supper was never intended for unbelievers. Paul in speaking of
"unworthily" receiving the sacrament (1 Cor. 11:27) does not mean
theoretical unbelief, but moral unworthiness, irreverence of spirit and manner.

I. The Lutheran Theory teaches a real and substantial presence
of the very body and blood of Christ, which was born of the Virgin Mary, and
suffered on the cross, in, with, and under (in, sub, cum) the elements of bread and wine, and the oral
manducation of both substances by all commun-icants, unworthy and unbelieving,
as well as worthy and believing, though with opposite effects. The simultaneous
co-existence or conjunction of the two substances is not a local inclusion of
one substance in the other (impanation), nor a mixture or fusing-together of
the two substances into one; nor is it permanent, but ceases with the
sacramental action. It is described as a sacramental, supernatural,
incomprehensible union.922 The
earthly elements remain unchanged and distinct in their substance and power,
but they become the divinely appointed media for communicating the heavenly
substance of the body and blood of Christ. They become so, not by priestly
consecration, as in the doctrine of trans-substantiation, but by the power and
Word of God. The eating of the body is by the mouth, indeed, yet is not
Caper-naitic, and differs from the eating of ordinary food.923 The object and use of the Lord’s Supper is chiefly the assurance
of the forgiveness of sins, to the comfort of the believer.924 This is the scholastic
statement of the doctrine, as given by the framers of the Formula Concordiae,
and the Lutheran scholastics of the seventeenth century.

The confessional deliverances of
the Lutheran Church on the Lord’s Supper are as follows: —

the
augsburg confession of 1530.

"ART. X. Of the Supper of
the Lord they teach that the [true] body and blood of Christ925are truly present [under the
form of bread and wine],926and are [there]927communicated to [and received
by]928those that eat929in the Lord’s Supper. And they
disapprove of those that teach otherwise."930

the altered augsburg confession of 1540.

Concerning the Supper of the
Lord they teach that with bread and wine are truly exhibited931the body and blood of Christ to
those that eat in the Lord’s Supper.932

articles
of smalkald (by luther), 1537.

"Of this Sacrament of the
Altar, we hold that the bread and wine in the Supper are the true body and
blood of Christ, and are given to, and re-ceived by, not only the pious, but
also to and by the impious Christians."

In the same articles Luther
denounces transubstantiation as a "subtle sophistry (subtilitas sophistica)," and the Romish mass as
"the greatest and most terrible abomination (maxima et horrenda abominatio)." Pars III., Art. VI., in
Mueller’s ed., pp. 301, 320.

formula
of concord (1577). epitome, art. vii. affirmative.

"I. We believe, teach, and
confess that in the Lord’s Supper the body and blood of Christ are truly and
substantially present, and that they are truly distributed and taken together
with the bread and wine.

"II. We believe, teach, and
confess that the words of the Testament of Christ are not to be understood
otherwise than as the words themselves literally sound, so that the bread does
not signify the absent body of Christ, and the wine the absent blood of Christ,
but that on account of the sacra-mental union the bread and wine are truly the
body and blood of Christ.

"III. Moreover, as concerns
the consecration, we believe, teach, and confess that no human work, nor any
utterance of the minister of the Church, is the cause of the presence of the
body and blood of Christ in the Supper, but that this is to be attributed to
the omnipotent power of our Lord Jesus Christ alone.

"IV. Nevertheless, we
believe, teach, and confess, by unanimous con-sent, that in the use of the
Lord’s Supper the words of the institution of Christ are by no means to be
omitted, but are to be publicly recited, as it is written (1 Cor. 10:16), ’The
cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of
Christ?’ etc. And this benediction takes place by the recitation of the words
of Christ.

"V. Now the foundations on
which we rest in this controversy with the Sacramentarians are the following,
which, moreover, Dr. Luther has laid down in his Larger Confession concerning
the Supper of the Lord: —

"The first foundation is an
article of our Christian faith, to wit: Jesus Christ is true, essential,
natural, perfect God and man in unity of person, inseparable and undivided.

"Secondly: That the right
hand of God is everywhere; and that Christ, in respect of his humanity, is
truly and in very deed seated thereat, and therefore as present governs, and
has in his hand and under his feet, as the Scripture saith (Eph. 1:22), all
things which are in heaven and on earth. At this right hand of God no other man,
nor even any angel, but the Son of Mary alone, is seated, whence also he is
able to effect those things which we have said.

"Thirdly: That the Word of
God is not false or deceiving.

"Fourthly: That God knows
and has in his power various modes of being in any place, and is not confined
to that single one which philosophers are wont to call local or circumscribed.

"VI. We believe, teach, and
confess that the body and blood of Christ are taken with the bread and wine,
not only spiritually through faith, but also by the mouth, nevertheless not
Capernaitically, but after a spiritual and heavenly manner, by reason of the
sacramental union. For to this the words of Christ clearly bear witness, in
which he enjoins us to take, to eat to drink; and that this was done by the
Apostles the Scripture makes mention, saying (Mark 14:23), ’And they all drank
of it.’ And Paul says, ’The bread which
we break is the communion of the body of Christ;’ that is, he that eats this
bread eats the body of Christ.

"To the same, with great
consent, do the chief of the most ancient doctors of the church—Chrysostom,
Cyprian, Leo the First, Gregory, Ambrose, Augustin—bear witness.

"VII. We believe, teach,
and confess that not only true believers in Christ, and such as worthily
approach the Supper of the Lord, but also the unworthy and unbelieving receive
the true body and blood of Christ; in such wise, nevertheless, that they derive
thence neither consolation nor life, but rather so as that receiving turns to
their judgment and condemnation, unless they be converted, and repent (1 Cor.
11:27, 29).

"For although they repel
from them Christ as a Saviour, nevertheless they are compelled, though
extremely unwilling, to admit him as a stem Judge. And he no less present
exercises his judgment over these impenitent guests than as present he works
consolation and life in the hearts of true believers and worthy guests.

"VIII. We believe, teach,
and confess that there is one kind only of unworthy guests: they are those only
who do not believe. Of these it is written (John 3:18), ’He that believeth not
is condemned already.’ And this
judgment is enhanced and aggravated by an unworthy use of the holy Supper (1
Cor. 11:29).

"IX. We believe, teach, and
confess that no true believer, so long as he retains a living faith, receives
the holy Supper of the Lord unto condemnation, however much weakness of faith
he may labor under. For the Lord’s Supper has been chiefly instituted for the
sake of the weak in faith, who nevertheless are penitent, that from it they may
derive true consolation and a strengthening of their weak faith (Matt. 9:12;
11:5, 28).

We believe, teach, and confess
that the whole worthiness of the guests at this heavenly Supper consists alone
in the most holy obedience and most perfect merit of Christ. And this we apply
to ourselves by true faith, and are rendered certain of the application of this
merit, and are confirmed in our minds by the sacrament. But in no way does that
worthiness depend upon our virtues, or upon our inward or outward
preparations."

The three great arguments for
the Lutheran theory are the words of institution taken in their literal sense,
the ubiquity of Christ’s body, and the prevailing faith of the church before
the Reformation.

1. As to the literal
interpretation, it cannot be carried out, and is surrendered, as inconsistent
with the context and the surroundings, by nearly all modern exegetes.933

2. The ubiquity of Christ’s body
involves an important element of truth, but is a dogmatic hypothesis without
sufficient Scripture warrant, and cannot well be reconciled with the fact of
the ascension, or with the nature of a body, unless it be resolved into a mere
potential or dynamic presence which makes it possible for Christ to make his
divine-human power and influence felt wherever he pleases.934

The illustrations which Luther
uses—as the sun shining everywhere, the voice resounding in a thousand ears and
hearts, the eye seeing different objects at once—all lead to a dynamic
presence, which Calvin fully admits.

3. The historic argument might
prove too much (for transubstantiation and the sacrifice of the mass), unless
we are satisfied with the substance of truth which underlies the imperfect
human theories and formulas. The real presence of Christ with his people is
indeed a most precious truth, which can never be surrendered. It is the very
life of the church and the comfort and strength of believers from day to day.
He promised the perpetual presence not only of his spirit or influence, but of
his theanthropic person:, I am with you alway." It is impossible to make
an abstract separation of the divine and human in the God-man. He is the Head
of the church, his body, and "filleth all in all." Nor can the church
give up the other important truth that Christ is the bread of life, and
nourishes, in a spiritual and heavenly manner, the soul of the believer which
is vitally united to him as the branch is to the vine. This truth is symbolized
in the miraculous feeding of the multitude, and set forth in the mysterious
discourse of the sixth chapter of John.

As far as Luther contended for
these truths, he was right against the Sacramentarians, though he erred in the
form of conception and statement. His view is mystical but profound; Zwingli’s
view is clear but superficial. The former commends itself to devout feeling,
the latter to the sober understanding and intellect.

II. The Zwinglian Theory.—The Lord’s Supper is a solemn
commemoration of the atoning death of Christ, according to his own command:
"Do this in remembrance of me," and the words of Paul: "As often
as ye eat this bread, and drink the cup, ye proclaim the Lord’s death till he
come."935 Zwingli
emphasized this primitive character of the institution as a gift of God to man,
in opposition to the Roman mass as a work or offering which man makes to God.936 He compares the sacrament to a wedding-ring which seals the
marriage union between Christ and the believer. He denied the corporal
presence, because Christ ascended to heaven, and because a body cannot be
present in more than one place at once, also because two substances cannot
occupy the same space at the same time; but he admitted his spiritual presence,
for Christ is eternal God, and his death is forever fruitful and efficacious.937 He denied the corporal eating as Capernaitic and useless, but he
admitted a spiritual participation in the crucified body and blood by faith.
Christ is both "host and feast" in the holy communion.

His last word on the subject of
the eucharist (in the Confession to King Francis I.) is this: —

"We believe that Christ is
truly present in the Lord’s Supper; yea, that there is no communion without
such presence .... We believe that the true body of Christ is eaten in the
communion, not in a gross and carnal manner, but in a sacramental and spiritual
manner by the religious, believing and pious heart."938

This passage comes so near the
Calvinistic view that it can hardly be distinguished from it. Calvin did
injustice to Zwingli, when once in a confidential letter he called his earlier
eucharistic doctrine, profane."939 But Zwingli in his polemic writings laid so much stress upon the
absence of Christ’s body, that the positive truth of His spiritual presence was
not sufficiently emphasized. Undoubtedly the Lord’s Supper is a commemoration
of the historic Christ of the past, but it is also a vital communion with the
ever-living Christ who is both in heaven and in his church on earth.

Zwingli’s theory did not pass
into any of the leading Reformed confessions; but it was adopted by the
Arminians, Socinians, Unitarians, and Rationalists, and obtained for a time a
wide currency in all Protestant churches, even the Lutheran. But the
Rationalists deny what Zwingli strongly believed, the divinity of Christ, and
thus deprive the Lord’s Supper of its deeper significance and power.

III. The Calvinistic Theory.—Calvin was the greatest divine and
best writer among the Reformers, and his "Institutes of the Christian
Religion" have almost the same importance for Reformed theology as the
"Summa" of Thomas Aquinas for that of the Roman Church. He organized
the ideas of the Reformation into a clear, compact system, with the freshness
and depth of genius, the convincing power of logic, and a complete mastery of
the Latin and French languages.940

His theory of the Lord’s Supper
occupies a via
media between
Luther and Zwingli; he combines the realism of the one with the spiritualism of
the other, and saves the substance for which Luther contended, but avoids the
objectionable form. He rests on the exegesis of Zwingli. He accepts the
symbolical meaning of the words of institution; he rejects the corporal
presence, the oral manducation, the participation of the body and blood by
unbelievers, and the ubiquity of Christ’s body. But at the same time he
strongly asserts a spiritual real presence, and a spiritual real participation
of Christ’s body and blood by faith. While Zwingli dwelt chiefly on the
negative, he emphasizes the positive, element. While the mouth receives the
visible signs of bread and wine, the soul receives by faith, and by faith
alone, the things signified and sealed thereby; that is, the body and blood of
Christ with the benefit of his atoning death and the virtue of his immortal
life. He combines the crucified Christ with the glorified Christ, and brings
the believer into contact with the whole Christ. He lays great stress on the
agency of the Holy Spirit in the ordinance, which was overlooked by Luther and
Zwingli, but which appears in the ancient liturgies in the invocation of the
Holy Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit who unites in a supernatural manner what is
separated in space, and conveys to the believing communicant the life-giving
virtue of the flesh of Christ now glorified in heaven.941 When Calvin requires the communicant to ascend to heaven to feed
on Christ there, he does, of course, not mean a locomotion, but that devotional
sursum corda of the ancient liturgies, which
is necessary in every act of worship, and is effected by the power of the Holy
Spirit.

Calvin discussed the eucharistic
question repeatedly and fully in his Institutes and in separate tracts.
I select a few extracts from his Institutes (Book IV., ch. XVII. 10 sqq.),
which contain his first and last thoughts on the subject.

(10) "The sum is, that the
flesh and blood of Christ feed our souls just as bread and wine maintain and
support our corporal life. For there would be no aptitude in the sign, did not
our souls find their nourishment in Christ. This could not be, did not Christ
truly form one with us, and refresh us by the eating of his flesh, and the
drinking of his blood. But though it seems an incredible thing that the flesh
of Christ, while at such a distance from us in respect of place, should be food
to us, let us remember how far the secret virtue of the Holy Spirit surpasses
all our conceptions, and how foolish it is to wish to measure its immensity by
our feeble capacity. Therefore, what our mind does not comprehend, let faith
conceive; viz., that the Spirit truly unites things separated by space. That
sacred communion of flesh and blood by which Christ transfuses his life into
us, just as if it penetrated our bones and marrow, he testifies and seals in the
Supper, and that not by presenting a vain or empty sign, but by there exerting
an efficacy of the Spirit by which he fulfils what he promises. And truly the
thing there signified he exhibits and offers to all who sit down at that
spiritual feast, although it is beneficially received by believers only who
receive this great benefit with true faith and heartfelt gratitude." ...

"(18) ... Though Christ
withdrew his flesh from us, and with his body ascended to heaven, he sits at
the right hand of the Father; that is, he reigns in power and majesty, and the
glory of the Father. This kingdom is not limited by any intervals of space, nor
circumscribed by any dimensions. Christ can exert his energy wherever he
pleases, in earth and heaven, can manifest his presence by the exercise of his
power, can always be present with his people, breathing into them his own life,
can live in them, sustain, confirm, and invigorate them, and preserve them
safe, just as if he were with them in the body, in fine, can feed them with his
own body, communion with which he transfuses into them. After this manner, the
body and blood of Christ are exhibited to us in the sacrament.

"(19) The presence of
Christ in the Supper we must hold to be such as neither affixes him to the
element of bread, nor encloses him in bread, nor circumscribes him in any way
(this would obviously detract from his celestial glory); and it must, moreover,
be such as neither divests him of his just dimensions, nor dissevers him by
differences of place, nor assigns to him a body of boundless dimensions,
diffused through heaven and earth. All these things are clearly repugnant to
his true human nature. Let us never allow ourselves to lose sight of the two
restrictions. First, let there be nothing derogatory to the heavenly glory of
Christ. This happens whenever he is brought under the corruptible elements of
this world, or is affixed to any earthly creatures. Secondly, let no property
be assigned to his body inconsistent with his human nature. This is done when
it is either said to be infinite, or made to occupy a variety of places at the
same time.

"But when these absurdities
are discarded, I willingly admit any thing which helps to express the true and
substantial communication of the body and blood of the Lord, as exhibited to
believers under the sacred symbols of the Supper, understanding that they are
received, not by the imagination or intellect merely, but are enjoyed in
reality as the food of eternal life."

Calvin’s theory was not
disapproved by Luther, who knew it, was substantially approved by Melanchthon
in 1540, and adopted by all the leading Reformed Confessions of faith. We
select a few specimens from one of the earliest and from the latest Calvinistic
standards: —

heidelberg
catechism (1563).

Question 76. What is it to eat
the crucified body, and drink the shed blood, of Christ?

Answer. It is not only to embrace with
a believing heart all the sufferings and death of Christ, and thereby to obtain
the forgiveness of sins and life eternal; but moreover also, to be so united
more and more to his sacred body by the Holy Ghost, who dwells both in Christ
and in us, that although He is in heaven, and we on the earth, we are,
nevertheless flesh of His flesh and bone of His bones, and live and are
governed forever by one Spirit, as members of the same body are by one soul.

Q. 78. Do, then, the bread and
wine become the real body and blood of Christ?

A. No: but as the water, in
baptism, is not changed into the blood of Christ, nor becomes the washing away
of sins itself, being only the divine token and assurance thereof; so also, in
the Lord’s Supper, the sacred bread does not become the body of Christ itself,
though agreeably to the nature and usage of sacraments it is called the body of
Christ.

Q. 79. Why, then, doth Christ
call the bread His body, and the cup His blood, or the New Testament in His
blood; and St. Paul, the communion of the body and blood of Christ?

A. Christ speaks thus not without great cause; namely, not only to teach
us thereby, that, like as bread and wine sustain this temporal life, so also
His crucified body and shed blood are the true meat and drink of our souls unto
life eternal; but much more, by this visible sign and pledge to assure us that
we are as really partakers of His true body and blood, through the working of
the Holy Ghost, as we receive by the mouth of the body these holy tokens in
remembrance of Him; and that all His sufferings and obedience are as certainly
our own, as if we had ourselves suffered and done all in our own persons.

westminster
confession of faith (1647).

Chapter
XXIX., section VII.

Worthy receivers, outwardly
partaking of the visible elements in this sacrament, do then also inwardly by
faith, really and indeed, yet not carnally and corporally, but spiritually,
receive and feed upon Christ crucified, and all benefits of his death: the body
and blood of Christ being then not corporally or carnally in, with, or under
the bread and wine; yet as really, but spiritually, present to the faith of
believers in that ordinance, as the elements themselves are, to the outward
senses.

westminster
larger catechism (1647).

Question 170. How do they that
worthily communicate in the Lord’s Supper feed upon the body and blood of
Christ therein?

Answer. As the body and blood of
Christ are not corporally or carnally present in, with, or under the bread and
wine in the Lord’s Supper; and yet are spiritually present to the faith of the
receiver, no less truly and really than the elements themselves are to their
outward senses; so they that worthily communicate in the sacrament of the
Lord’s Supper, do therein feed upon the body and blood of Christ, not after a
corporal or carnal, but in a spiritual manner; yet truly and really, while by
faith they receive and apply unto themselves Christ crucified, and all the
benefits of his death.

*Schaff, Philip, History of
the Christian Church, (Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc.) 1997.
This material has been carefully compared, corrected¸ and emended (according to
the 1910 edition of Charles Scribner's Sons) by The Electronic Bible Society,
Dallas, TX, 1998.

817 Claus Harms, a typical Lutheran of the nineteenth century,
published in 1817 Ninety-five Theses against Rationalism in the Lutheran
Church, one of which reads thus (I quote from memory): "The Catholic
Church is a glorious church; for it is built upon the Sacrament. The Reformed
Church is a glorious church; for it is built upon the Word. But more glorious
than either is the Lutheran Church; for it is built upon both the Word and the
Sacrament."

818 "Vom Anbeten des Sacraments des heil. Leichnams Christi"
(1523), addressed to the Bohemians (Erl. ed. XXVIII. 389, 404, 410); Kurzes
Bekenntniss vom heil. Sacrament (1544), Erl. ed. XXXII. 420 sqq. In a letter to
Buchholzer in Berlin, Dec. 4, 1539 (De Wette, V. 236), Luther reports that the
elevation was given up at Wittenberg. But this must refer to the castle church,
for in the parish church it continued till June 25, 1542 when Bugenhagen
abolished it. See Köstlin, II. 588 and 683.

819 See above § 45, p. 218, and the two editions of the Taufbüchlein
in the Erl. ed. XXII. 157, 291. In both editions dipping is prescribed
("Da nehme er das Kind und tauche es in die Taufe"), and no mention is made
of any other mode. The Reformed churches objected to the retention of exorcism
as a species of superstition. The first English liturgy of Edward VI. (who was
baptized by immersion) prescribes trine-immersion (dipping); the second liturgy
of 1552 does the same, but gives (for the first time in England) permission to
substitute pouring when the child is weak.

820 He calls it in a letter to Spalatin, Feb. 5, 1528 (De Wette, III.
279), "epistolam
tumultuarie scriptam." He alludes to it in several other letters of the same year (III.
250, 253, 263).

825 Petrus de Alliaco (1350-1420) was one of the leaders of the
disciplinary reform movement during the papal schism, and in the councils of
Pisa and Constance, the teacher of Gerson and Nicolaus de Clemanges. He gives
his views on consubstantiation and transubstantiation, which resemble those of
Occam in his Quaestiones super libros Sententiarum (Argent. 1490), Lib. IV. Qu. VI.
See Steitz, in his learned art. on transubstantiation, in Herzog2 XV. 831; and Tschackert, Peter
von Ailli, Gotha, 1877.

828 In Walch, XIX. 1593 sqq.; Erl. ed., XXVIII. 389 sqq. He says in
the beginning: "We Germans believe that Christ is verily with his flesh
and blood in the sacrament, as he was born of Mary, and hung on the holy
cross." He rejects the figurative interpretation because it might deprive
other passages of their force.

830 Preface to "Farrago rerum, theolog., Wesselo autore,"
published at Wittenberg, 1521 or 1522. Op., VII. 493 sqq. See Ullmann, l.c.
p. 564 sq. This edition, however, excludes the tract De coena,—a
proof that Luther did not altogether like it.

831 See §§ 66 and 68, pp. 378 sqq. and 387. Carlstadt is the real
author of the eucharistic controversy, not Luther, as Hospinian and Hottinger
assumed. But Luther and Zwingli were the chief actors in it. Carlstadt’s view
passed out of sight, when the Swiss view was brought out.

832 This is the reason why Luther called Carlstadt and his
sympathizers enthusiasts and fanatics. Schwarmgeister
or Schwärmer.

833 His eucharistic tracts in crude and unreadable German are printed
in Walch, XX. 138-158, 378-409, 2852-2929. Comp., also, vol. XV. 2414-2502.
Carlstadt’s earlier eucharistic writings of 1521 strongly defend the corporal
presence, and even the adoration of bread and wine, because they were the body
and blood of Christ. Planck, l.c., II. 210 sqq., gives a full exposition
of his earlier and later views. See, also, M. Göbel on Carlstadt’s
Abendmahlslehre in the "Studien und Kritiken," 1842.

836 The assertion of some biographers of Zwingli, that he already at
Glarus became acquainted with the writings of Ratramnus and Wiclif, is without
proof. He first intimates his view in a letter to his teacher Wyttenbach, June
15, 1523, but as a secret. (Opera, VII., 1. 297.) He published the
letter of Honius, which explains the est to be equivalent to significat,
at Zürich in March, 1525, but had received it in 1521 from two learned
visitors, Rhodius and Sagarus. See Gieseler, III. 1, 192 sq., note 27 (Germ.
ed.); and especially Ullmann, l.c., II. 569 sq.

837 Opera, III. 589. Walch gives a German translation, XVII.
1881. Planck (II. 261 sqq.) quotes all the important points of this letter.

838 Opera, III. 145. The section on the Lord’s Supper appeared
also in a German translation. Planck, II. 265 sqq.

845 He informed Stiefel, Jan. 1, 1527 (De Wette, !II. 148), that he
was writing a book against the "sacramentarii turbatores." On March 2l, 1527 (III.
165), he informed the preacher Ursinus that he had finished it, and warned him
to avoid the "Zwingliana et Oecolampadia sententia" as the very pest, since it was "blasphema in Christi verbum et
fidem."
The work was translated into German by M. Judex. The closing passages blaming
Bucer for accompanying a Latin version of Luther’s Kirchenpostille
and
Bugenhagen’s commentary on the Psalms with Zwinglian notes are omitted in the
Wittenberg edition of Luther’s Works, 1548. Amsdorf complained of this
omission, which was traced by some to Melanchthon, by others to Rörer, the
corrector of Luft’s printing establishment. See Walch, XX. 53, and Erl. ed.,
XXX. 15.

854 Secunda,
justa et aequa responsio ad Mart. Lutherum. The book is mentioned by Hospinian, but must be
very rare, since neither Löscher nor Walch nor Planck has seen it.

855 It was afterwards called the "Great" Confession, to
distinguish it from the "Small" Confession which he published sixteen
years later (1544). Erl. ed. XXX. 151-373; Walch, XX. 11 18 sqq. In a letter
dated March 28, 1528 (De Wette, III. 296), he informs Link that he sent copies
of his Confession through John Hofmann to Nürnberg, and speaks with his usual
contempt of the Sacramentarians. "Zwingel," he says, "est tam rudis, ut asino queat
comparari."

856 "Es sind dreierlei Weise an einem Ort zu sein,
localiter oder circumscriptive, definitive, repletive." He explains this at
length (XXX. 207 sqq., Erl. ed.). Local or circumscriptive presence is the
presence of wine in the barrel, where the body fills the space; definite
presence is incomprehensible, as the presence of an angel or devil in a house
or a man, or the passing of Christ through the tomb or through the closed door;
repletive presence is the supernatural omnipresence of God which fills all
space, and is confined by no space. When Christ walked on earth, he was locally
present; after the resurrection, he appeared to the disciples definitively and
incomprehensibly; after his ascension to the right hand of God, he is
everywhere by virtue of the inseparable union of his humanity with his
divinity.

857 Zwingli made the biting remark that Luther ends this book with the
Devil, with whom he had begun his former book.

858 Zwingli’s answer in German is printed in Werke, II. Part
II. 94-223; in Latin, Opera, II. 416-521. The answer of Oecolampadius,
in Walch, XX. 1725 sqq.

861 The 27th is given by Hedio in his Itinerary, as the day of their
arrival, and is accepted by Baum, Erichson, and Köstlin. The usual date is the
29th.

862 There are still extant ten letters from the Landgrave to Zwingli,
and three from Zwingli to the Landgrave, to which should be added four letters
from Duke Ulrich of Württemberg to Zwingli. They are published in
Kuchenbecker’s Monumenta Hassiaca, in Neudecker’s Urkunden
aus der Reformationszeit, and in Zwingli’s Opera, vol. VIII., and are explained and
discussed by Max Lenz in three articles quoted in the Literature. The
correspondence began during the second Diet of Speier, April 22, 1529 (the date
of the first epistle of Philip), and ended Sept. 30, 1531 (the date of Philip’s
last letter), eleven days before Zwingli’s death. The letters of the Landgrave,
before the Marburg Conference, treat of religion; those after that Conference,
chiefly of politics, and are strictly confidential. The prince addresses the
theologian as "Dear Master Ulrich," "Dear Zwingli," etc.

863 Vom Kriege wider die Türken, April, 1529, and Heerpredigt
wider den Türken,
published it the end of 1529, and in a second edition, January, 1530. In the
Erl. ed., XXXI. 31 sqq. and 80 sqq.

864 R. Rothe calls Luther an old Catholic, not a modern Protestant,
though the greatest Reformer and a prophet. (Kirchengesch. II. 334.)

870 Bucer, in a letter to Blaurer in Constance, Oct. 18, 1529, charged
Melanchthon especially with the obstinate refusal of brotherhood, and made him,
even more than Luther, responsible for the failure of the Conference, adding,
as a reason, that he was unwilling to lose the favor of the Emperor Charles and
his brother Ferdinand. Baum, l.c., p. 463; Erichson, p. 45.

871 "In interiore hypocaustoad cubiculum Principis," says Jonas (Seckendorf,
II. 140). It was not the Rittersaal, but the reception-room in the new
east wing of the castle, adjoining the bedroom of the Landgrave. The castle has
undergone many changes.

874 Luther hastily prepared a memorandum for the Landgrave, with
quotations from Hilary, Ambrose, Chrysostom, Cyprian, and Irenaeus, to
counteract the quotations from Augustin. See Letters, ed. De Wette, III.
508-511.

880 Three copies were signed at Marburg (according to Osiander’s report,
who took one to Nürnberg). They were long supposed to be lost, but two have
been recovered and published by Heppe and Usteri from the archives at Cassel
and Zürich (see Lit.). They agree almost verbatim, except in the order of
signatures, the former giving the first place to the Lutheran, the latter to
the Reformed names. The small differences are discussed by Usteri. l.c.

885 Comp. the remarks of Ranke, III. 124 sqq. He sees the significance
of the Conference in the fact that the two parties, in spite of the theological
difference, professed the same evangelical faith.

886 Erl. ed. XXXII. 396-425; Walch, XX. 2195 sqq. Comp. Luther’s
letter to Hungarian ministers, April 21, 1544 (in De Wette, V. 644), where he
announces his intention soon to add one more to his many confessions on the
real presence. "Cogor post tot confessiones meas adhuc unam facere, quam faciam propediem
et novissimam."
The Erlangen editor says that the book was not published till 1545; but the
titlepage of Hans Luft’s edition bears date "Am Ende: M. D. XLIIII."
Melanchthon informed Bullinger of the appearance of the book in August, 1544;
and Calvin heard of it in November, 1544.

887 Schwenkfeld sent Luther some books with appeals to his authority
(1543). Luther returned an answer by the messenger, in which he called
Schwenkfeld "a nonsensical fool," and asked him to spare him his
books, which were "spit out by the Devil." In the Short Confession,
he calls him always Stenkefeld (Stinkfield), and ein
"verdampt Lügenmand."

891 Comp. above, p. 251. Melanchthon called the "Short
Confession" "the most atrocious book of Luther " (atrocissimum Lutheri scriptum,
in quo bellum peri; deivpnou kuriakou'instaurat). Letter to Bullinger, Aug. 30,
1544, in "Corp. Ref." v. 475. He agreed with the judgment of Calvin,
who wrote to him, June 28, 1545 "I confess that we all owe the greatest
thanks to Luther, and I should cheerfully concede to him the highest authority,
if he only knew how to control himself. Good God! what jubilee we prepare for
the Papists, and what sad example do we set to posterity!"

898 De Wette, V. 778. The German in Walch, XVII. 2633. It should be
remembered that in this letter, dated Jan. 17, 1546, he describes himself as
"senex,
decrepitus, piger, fessus, frigidus, monoculus," and "infelicissimus omnium hominum"

902 Hardenberg, a Reformed minister at Bremen ((I. 1574), reported
such a conversation as coming from the lips of his friend Melanchthon; but
Melanchthon nowhere alludes to it. Stähelin (John Calvin, I. 228 sq.)
accepts, Köstlin (M. L., II. 627) rejects the report, as resting on some
misunderstanding. So also C. Bertheau in the article "Hardenberg" in
Herzog2, V. 596 sq. Comp. Diestelmann, Die
letzte Unterredung Luthers mit Melanchthon über den Abendmahlsstreit, Göttingen, l874; Köstlin’s
review of Diestelmann, in the "Studien und Kritiken," 1876, p. 385
sqq.; and Walte in the "Jahrb. für prot. Theol.," 1883. It is a pity
that the story cannot be sufficiently authenticated, for it certainly expresses
what ought to have been Luther’s last confession on the subject.

903 De Wette, V. 211: "Bene vale et salutabis Dr. Joannem Sturmium et Johannem
Calvinum reverenter, quorum libellos cum singulari voluptate legi. Sadoleto
optarem, ut crederet Deum esse creatorem hominum etiam extra Italiam." From the last sentence
it appears that he read Calvin’s answer to Bishop Sadolet. He is reported to
have remarked to Cruciger: "This answer has hand and foot, and I rejoice
that God raises such men who will give popery the last blow, and finish the war
against Antichrist which I began." Calvin alludes to these salutations in
his Secunda
Defensio adv. Westphalum (Opera, ed. Reuss, IX. 92).

913 In his book, "Dass die Worte Christi," etc. (1527, Erl. ed.
XXX. 11), he calls the Sacramentarians "his tender children, his dear
brethren, his golden friends" ("meine zarte
Kinder, meine Brüderlein, meine gülden Freundlein "), who would have known
nothing of Christ and the gospel if Luther had not previously written ("wo
der Luther nicht zuvor hätte geschrieben"). He compared Carlstadt to Absalom and to Judas
the traitor. He treated the Swiss not much better, in a letter to his blind
admirer Amsdorf, April 14, 1545 (De Wette, V. 728), where he says that they
kept silence, while he alone was sustaining the fury of popery (cum solus sudarem in sustinenda
furia Papae),
and that after the peril was over, they claimed the victory, and reaped the
fruit of his labors (tum erampebant triumphatores gloriosi. Sic, sic alius laborat, alius
fruitur). Dr.
Döllinger (Luther, 1851, p. 29 sq.) derives the bitterness of Luther’s polemics
against the Swiss largely from "jealousy and wounded pride," and
calls his refutation of their arguments "very weak," and even
"dis-honest" ("seine Polemik war, wie immer und
gegen jedermann, in hohem Grade unehrlich," p. 31). The charge of dishonesty we
cannot admit.

914 The philosopher Steffens, who was far from uncharitable bigotry,
always went from Berlin to Breslau to commune with the orthodox Old Lutherans.
Bishop Martensen, one of the profoundest Lutheran divines of the nineteenth
century, thought that only in cases of necessity could a Lutheran commune with
a Calvinist, who denies what Luther affirms, or evades the mystery of the real
presence. Briefwechsel zwischen Martensen und Dorner, Berlin, 1888, vol. I. 262 sq.
He changed his view afterwards. I could name eminent living Lutheran divines
who would hardly allow even this exception. In America the Lutheran theory had
largely given way to the Zwinglian until it was revived by the German Missouri
Synod, and found a learned advocate in Dr. Krauth, who went so far as to
propose to the General Lutheran Council the so-called "Galesburg
rule" (1875): "Lutheran pulpits for Lutheran ministers only, Lutheran
altars for Lutheran communicants only."

915 Zwingli’s Latin is better than his Züridütsch, in which his answers to
Luther’s German attacks were written.

916 In July, 1545 (De Wette, V. 732 sq.), he wrote to his wife from
Leipzig that he did not wish to return, and that she should sell house and
home, and move "from this Sodoma" to Zulsdorf. He would rather beg
his bread than torture his last days by the sight of the disorderly condition
of Wittenberg.

917 These champions of Lutheran orthodoxy were not simply Lutherisch,
but verluthert, durchluthert, and überluthert. They fulfilled the prediction
of the Reformer: "Adorabunt stercora mea." Their mottoes were,—

"Gottes
Wort und Luther’s Lehr

Vergehet nun und nimmermehr;"

and

"Gottes
Wort und Luther’s Schrift

Sind des Papst’s und Calvini Gift."

They believed that Luther’s example gave them license to
exhaust the vocabulary of abuse, and to violate every rule of courtesy and good
taste. They called the Reformed Christians "dogs," and Calvin’s God
"a roaring bull (Brüllochse), a blood-thirsty Moloch, and a hellish
Behemoth." They charged them with teaching and worshiping the very Devil (den
leibhaftigen Teufel), instead of the living God. One of them proved that "the damned
Calvinistic heretics hold six hundred and sixty-six tenets [the apocalyptic
number!] in common with the Turks." Another wrote a book to show that
Zwinglians and Calvinists are no Christians at all, but baptized Jews and
Mohammedans. O
sancta simplicitas! On the intolerance of those champions of Lutheran orthodoxy, see the
historical works of Arnold, Planck, Tholuck (Der Geist
der lutherischen Theologen Wittenbergs im 17ten Jahrh., 1852, p. 279 sqq.), and the
fifth volume of Janssen.

918 Die Rechtfertigungslehre wird vielfach zur
Einschläferung statt zur Schärfung des Gewissens missbraucht."See Dorner’s letter of
May 14, 1871, in the Briefwechsel just quoted, vol. II. 114. Dorner and
Martensen, both masters in Christian dogmatics and ethics, kept up a most
instructive and interesting correspondence of friendship for more than forty
years, on all theological and ecclesiastical questions of the day, even during
the grave disturbances between Germany and Denmark on the Schleswig-Holstein
controversy, which broke out at last in open war (1864). That correspondence is
as remarkable in theology as the Schiller and Goethe correspondence is in
poetry and art.

919 The neat manuscript is still preserved in the library of the
Wasserkirche at Zürich, where I examined it in August, 1886.

920 I have given the substance of several passages scattered through
his polemical writings, and collected in the useful edition of Zwingli’s Sämmtliche
Schriften by
Usteri and Vögelin, vol. II., Part II., p. 571 sqq.

922 The Lutheran divines of the seventeenth century describe the real
presence as sacramentalis,
vera et realis, substantiatis, mystica, supernaturalis, et incomprehensibilis, and distinguish it from the praesentia gloriosa,
hypostatica, spiritualis, figurativa, and from ajpousiva (absence), ejnousiva (inexistence),
sunousiva (co-existence in the sense of coalescence), and metousiva (transubstantiation).

923 The Formula
Concordiae (Epitome,
Art. VII., Negativa 21) indignantly rejects the notion of dental mastication as
a malicious slander of the Sacramentarians. But Luther, in his instruction to
Melanchthon, Dec. 17, 1534, gave it as his opinion, from which he would not
yield, that "the body of Christ is distributed, eaten, and bitten with the
teeth.""Und ist Summa das unsere Meinung, dass wahrhaftig in
und mit dem Brod der Leib Christi gessen wird, also dass alles, was das Brod
wirket und leidet, der Leib Christi wirke und leide, dass er ausgetheilt,
gessen, und mit den Zähnen zubissen [zerbissen]werde." De Wette, IV. 572. Comp.
his letter to Jonas, Dec. 16, 1534, vol. IV. 569 sq. Dorner thinks that Luther
speaks thus only per
synecdochen; but
this is excluded by the words, "What the bread does and suffers, that the
body of Christ does and suffers." Melanchthon very properly declined to
act on this instruction (see his letter to Camerarius, Jan. 10, 1535, in the
"Corp. Reform." II. 822), and began about that time to change his
view on the real presence. He was confirmed in his change by the renewal of the
eucharistic controversy, and his contact with Calvin.

924 The Lutheran theory is generally designated by the convenient term
consubstantiation, but Lutheran divines expressly reject it as a
misrepresentation. The Zwinglians, with their conception of corporality, could
not conceive of a corporal presence without a local presence; while Luther,
with his distinction of three kinds of presence and his view of the ubiquity of
Christ’s body, could do so. The scholastic term consubstantiatio is not so well defined as transubstantiatio, and may be used in different
senses: (1) a mixture of two substances (which nobody ever taught); (2) an
inclusion of one substance in another (impanatio); (3) a sacramental co-existence of two substances in
their integrity in the same place. In the first two senses the term is not
applicable to the Lutheran theory. The "in pane" might favor impanation, but, the sub and cum qualify it. Dr. Steitz, in a
learned article on Transubstantiation, in Herzog,1 XVI. 347, and in the second
edition, XV. 829, attributes to the Lutheran Church the third view of
consubstantiation, but to Luther himself the second; namely, "die
sacramentiche Durchdringung der Brotsubstanz von der Substanz des Leibes." To this Luther’s
illustration of the fire in the iron might lead. But fire and iron remain
distinct. At all events, he denied emphatically a local or physical inclusion.
Lutheran divines in America are very sensitive when charged with
consubstantiation.

926 Vere
adsint et distribuantur. The German text adds: unter der Gestalt des Brots und
Weins. The
variations between the Latin and German texts of the original edition indicate
a certain hesitation in Melanchthon’s mind, if not the beginning of a change,
which was completed in the altered confession.

930 Et
improbant secus docentes. In German: Derhalben wird auch die Gegenlehre verworfen, wherefore also the opposite
doctrine is rejected. The sacramentarian (Zwinglian) doctrine is meant, but
not the Calvinistic, which appeared six years afterward, 1536. The term improbant for the papal damnant, and anathema sit, shows the progress in
toleration. The Zwinglian view is not condemned as a heresy, but simply
disapproved as an error. The Formula of Concord made a step backwards in this
respect, and uses repudiamus and damnamus.

932 The disapproval of those who teach otherwise is significantly
omitted, no doubt in deference to Calvin’s view, which had been published in
the mean time, and to which Melanchthon himself leaned.

933 I may mention among commentators (on Matt. 26:26 and parallel
passages), De Wette, Meyer, Weiss (in the seventh ed. of Meyer on Matt., p. 504
sq.), Bleek, Ewald, Van Oosterzee, Alford, Morison, etc.; and, among Lutheran
and Lutheranizing theologians, Kahnis, Jul. Müller, Martensen, Dorner. The
Bible, true to its Oriental origin and character, is full of parables,
metaphors, and tropical expressions, from Genesis to Revelation. The
substantive verb ejsti(which was not spoken in the Aramaic original) is
simply the logical copula, and may designate a figurative, as well as a real,
identity of the subject and the predicate; which of the two, depends on the
connection and surroundings. I may say of a likeness of Luther, "This is
Luther’s," i.e., a figure or representation of Luther. It has a symbolical
or allegorical sense in many passages, as Matt. 13:38 sq.; Luke 12:1; John
10:6, 14:6; Gal. 4:24; Heb. 10:20; Rev. 1:20. But what is most conclusive, even
in the words of institution, Luther himself had to admit a double metaphor;
namely, a synecdoche partis pro toto ("This is my body" for "This is my body, and bread;"
to avoid transubstantiation, which denies the substance of bread), and a
synecdoche continentis
pro contento ("
This cup is the new covenant in my blood," instead of " This wine,"etc.).
The whole action is symbolical. At that time Christ, living and speaking to the
disciples with his body yet unbroken, and his blood not yet shed, could not
literally offer his body to them. They would have shuddered at such an idea,
and at least expressed their surprise. Kahnis, an orthodox Lutheran, came to
the conclusion (1861) that " the literal interpretation of the words of
institution is an impossibility, and must be given up."(See the first. ed.
of his Luth. Dogmatik, I. 616 sq.) Dorner says (Christl.
Glaubenslehre, II. 853), " That ejstivmay be understood figuratively
is beyond a doubt, and should never have been denied. It is only necessary to
refer to the parables."Martensen, an eminent Danish Lutheran (Christl.
Dogmatik, p. 491), admits Zwingli’s exegesis, and thinks that his "
sober common-sense view has a greater importance than Lutheran divines are
generally disposed to accord to it."

934 The Lutheran divines were divided between the idea of an absolute
ubiquity (which would prove too much for the Lutheran doctrine, and run
into a sort of Panchristism or Christo-Pantheism), and a relative ubiquity
or multivolipraesentia
(which depends
upon the will). The Formula of Concord inconsistently favors both views. See
Dorner’s History of Christology, II. 710 sqq. (Germ. ed.), and Schaff, Creeds,
I. 322, 325 sq., and 348.

937 He expressed at Marburg, and in his two confessions to Charles I.
and to Francis I., his full belief in the divinity of Christ in the sense of
the Nicene and Athanasian Creeds. Dorner says (l.c., p. 302): "Dass
Zwingli Christum gegenwärtig denkt, ist unleugbar; er sei bei diesem Mahle
Wirth und Gastmahl (hospes et epulum)."